
GIass_ j. 

Book 



THANKSGIVING: 



MEMORIES OF THE DAY: HELPS TO THE HABIT. 



BY WILLIAM ADAMS, D.D. 



Kal ravvv irapaivoo v/xas euOvfj-e?}/. 

St. Paul. 

If thou be a severe, sour-complexioned man, then I here disallow 
thee to be a competent judge. 

Izaak Walton. 



NEW YORK: 
CHARLES SCRIBNER & CO., 

654 BROADWAY. 
. 1867. 





Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1867, Tby 
'CHARLES SCRIBNEE, & CO., 
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for th< 
Southern District of New York, 



3 7 



JOHN F. TROW & CO., 
PRINTERS, STEREOTYPE!: S, % ELECTROTYPERS, 
GO GREENE STREET, N. Y. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Introductory : Memories and Habits 3 

Daily Marvels 17 

Exuberant Goodness 39 

Home 57 

A Cheerful Temper 79 

Happy Mediocrity 101 

The Blessedness of Tears. . . 125 ^ 

Cheap Contentment 147 

Balancings and Compensations 165 

The Zest of Life 183 

Politics and the Pulpit ma 199 

Christian Patriotism 229 

Lull in the Storm 251 

Liberty and Law 275 

Independence not Secession 293 

American Nationality 313 

The Past and the Present 341 



INTRODUCTORY. 



MEMORIES AND HABITS. 

The beginning of this world's history was a song : 
its end will be a doxology. 

The secret of all rational contentment is revealed in 
that inspired direction which ought to be written on every 
heart, as a compendious rule of life. " Be careful for 
nothing ; but in everything, by prayer and supplication, 
with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known 
unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all 
understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds thro' 
Christ Jesus." 

While the cultivation of a thankful spirit is at all 
times commended by reason and religion, it would be 
affectation to attempt any concealment of the fact, that 
the substance of this volume was prepared with special 
reference to that day in the calendar which bears the 
familiar name of Thanksgiving. 

In the cathedral of Limerick there hangs a peal of 
bells which was manufactured for a convent in Italy, by 
an enthusiast who fixed his home for many years near 
the convent cliff to enjoy their daily chimes. In some 



4 



Thanksgiving. 



political convulsion the bells and their manufacturer were 
swept away to another land. After a long interval, the 
course of his wanderings brought him to Ireland. On a 
calm and beautiful evening, as the vessel which bore him 
floated along the broad stream of the Shannon, he sud- 
denly heard the bells peal forth from the cathedral tower, 
They were the long-lost treasures of his memory. Home, 
happiness, friends, all early recollections were in their 
sound. Crossing his arms on his breast, he lay back in 
the boat. When the rowers looked round, they saw his 
face still turned to the cathedral — but his eyes had closed 
forever on the world.* Such a tide of memories had 
swept over the sympathetic cords of his heart, that they 
snapped under the vibration. Who has not experienced 
the power of association in its milder and happier forms ? 
The return of an anniversary, the melody of a tune, the 
swinging of a church bell, will set memory in motion, and 
unveil the pictures which hang on her sacred walls. Be- 
cause memory is clad in sober and russet garb, many as- 
sociate her form with sadness. But it is a sadness from 
which we never wish to be divorced. Peace, quietness, 
and " cherub contemplation," come in her train. Memory 
is the mother of gratitude. Mirth and frivolity are born 
of present excitements ; but there cannot be deep and 
serene happiness in the absence of all memories of the 
past. 

The bare mention of the word, the Old Thanksgiving 
Day — what a power has it to revive the pleasantest remi- 
niscences, and recall the brightest scenes of other days in 



* Quarterly Rev., Oct., 1854. 



Memories and Habits. 



5 



many hearts ! It transports them to the home of their 
childhood. It takes them at once into the presence of 
the father and mother who, it may be, for many years 
have been sleeping in the grave. It recalls their smiles 
of affectionate greeting, their tones of cheerful welcome ; 
tones and smiles such as none but they could give. Every 
image of peace, contentment, competence, abundance, 
and joy, comes back spontaneously on each return of the 
grateful festival. It is a day not indeed heralded and 
emblazoned, like the corresponding festivals in our ances- 
tral land, in all the pomp and glory of song. It has not 
been celebrated like Christmas, by the imperial song of 
Milton, the dove-like notes of Herbert, or the classic 
beauty of Keble. Connected with it are no superstitious 
rites handed down from time immemorial ; no revellings in 
baronial halls ; no decorations of churches or houses with 
garlands or evergreens ; no wassailings ; no shoutings ; 
no carols j no riotous dissipation. Simpler in its nature, 
humbler in its pretensions, better suited to a people of a 
more recent origin, it is set apart to the exercise of those 
home-bred affections, those "honest fireside delights," 
which are greener than laurel or fir-tree, and which, 
from a natural affinity, most closely harmonize with the 
sweet sanctities of our holy religion. As the day drew 
on, anticipation was busy in the young and the old. The 
aged pair, from beneath whose shelter their children, one 
after the other, had gone forth into the world, leaving 
them alone, looked forward with delight to the prospect 
of being surrounded once more by their numerous pro- 
geny on a day of gladness ; and children separated widely 
apart, and already grown familiar with life's perplexities 



6 



Thanksgiving. 



and cares, hailed with pleasure the "yearly sacrifice," 
when they should all rally again around the paternal 
hearth, and renew their faith and affection among the 
long-cherished scenes of their childhood. Happy was 
the venerable sire, who went up that day to the house of 
God, in company with his children and children's chil- 
dren, and who sat down to the table of plenty with his 
whole household, in health, peace, and contentment. If 
any were detained from the gathering by stern necessity, 
places were prepared for them as if they were present, in 
order that all might feel how closely they were linked by 
invisible sympathies ; and the absent ones, wherever on 
sea or land they roamed, were as " a bird wandering from 
his nest," or crippled in the time of migration, looking far 
away, and longing to join himself unto his fellows. 

Though this particular day has been designated by 
the civil authorities, it should be borne in mind that in 
the one only national organization which had God for its 
author, several days in the year were set apart by Divine 
institution for religious festivities. Spring, summer, and 
autumn had each its festal symbolism ; the most joyous 
of which, called the Feast of Tabernacles, was an annual 
Thanksgiving — not only in memory of ancestral favors, 
but for the ingathering of the harvests. Nothing can be 
conceived more beautiful than the manner of its obser- 
vance. Booths were erected in the open air, with branches 
from the palm and willow, within which families were 
gathered, to eat together before the Lord ; so that the 
occasion was sacred to the reunion of friends, the enjoy- 
ment of hospitality, the interchange of kindness, the 
expression of generous regard for the stranger, the widow, 



Memories and Habits. 



7 



and the fatherless. Nor was it lawful for a Jew so much 
as to taste of ear or parched corn, or bread of the new 
harvest, till a nation had borne a sheaf of barley or wheat 
and waved it before God, in token of their gratitude. 
Are we charmed by the picture which the imagination 
paints of that national spectacle, when the glens of the 
vine and olive gave forth their happy inhabitants, to flow 
together into the court of the Lord, with chanting of 
psalms and waving of sheaf and branch ? But when did 
the sun ever look down upon such a scene as has been 
spread often beneath his eye on this Western Continent, a 
land unknown and undreamed of when Hebrew feasts 
were instituted, when many States have agreed to devote 
one and the same day for Thanksgiving to our common 
Father for his abundant goodness ? What millions of 
well-clad, well-fed, well-taught, and, if they would but be- 
lieve it, happy people, within the temples of religion, and 
the homes of health, comfort, and plenty ! As the mind 
traverses over the extended scene, it rests not so much on 
metropolitan affluence, on gatherings in stately mansions 
and tapestried walls, where sumptuous fare is of daily oc- 
currence, as on the humbler habitations of rural life, 
* where man is brought by earth, sky, and season, in closer 
contact with God. Toil is at rest and contented with its 
rewards. Plough and flail are exchanged for recreation. 
If nature is more silent than in earlier months, when birds 
and, beasts are full of jocund music and life, it is the 
silence of peaceful contentment. The rich autumn sun- 
light bathes the sere and yellow stalks and husks of corn 
still standing in the field, reduced to the undress of the 
year, yet testifying of the golden wealth they have yield- 



8 



Thanksgiving. 



ed to man ; barns bursting with plenty ; the cattle chew- 
ing the cud with mute thankfulness; families reassem- 
bled in the old homestead; mirth in the voices of the 
young, and placid delight warming the ashy hue of age ; 
what images of serene satisfaction are those which are 
presented by this day of happy memories ! 

Thanksgiving Day has a history attached to it. Like 
the Latin word "virtus," it is a history which runs 
through the entire life of a people. We cannot afford to 
lose reverence for ancestral memories. It is to be re- 
gretted that Mr. Irving, our American Goldsmith, has 
expended so much time and labor in the prolix exagge- 
ration of the peculiar habits of the early Dutch colonists. 
When Diedrich Knickerbocker extends an extravaganza 
through two volumes over that portion of our history, we 
confess to a feeling somewhat painful, mingling with the 
keenest relish of the humorous. We need more, not less 
of filial respect and gratitude in our national character. 
Shem and Japheth, with their mantle of charity, did a 
nobler service than their brother who laughed at the 
shame of their common parentage. In that transition 
period through which we are passing, it is well to think 
of the primitive strength which is beneath us, and upon 
which a fruitful surface invites and rewards our toil. The 
origin of this day was with a people who were exiles for 
the sake of truth and liberty, and who gave a soul to the 
scattered colonies of the Western Hemisphere. "Te 
Deums " had been chanted in the cathed als of the Old 
world by royal decree, at the birth of princes, the coro- 
nation of kings, and the issue of great battles ; but the 
voluntary appointment of a day, by a whole people, for 



Memories and Habits. 



9 



the distinctive purpose of rendering thanks to the Al- 
mighty for his manifold blessings, civil and religious, 
national and domestic, marks an epoch in history. — 
Thanksgiving day is the festival of religious liberty. 
Removed to a distance from all tyranny, passing from 
suffering, which called for brave defiance and patience, 
into success and enlargement which inspired gratitude, 
religion, finding its freedom in the. New World, poured out 
its carols at the very gate of heaven. 

Among the many proclamations issued by the Gover- 
nors of the several States in the autumn of 1857, ap- 
pointing the Thanksgiving for that year, was one couched 
in these words : 

" Since I have been in office, I have, in each year, as 
governor of the State, without any authority of law, but 
sustained by ancient custom, appointed a day of thanks- 
giving. Thursday, the 19th day of this month, is the day 
now appointed, and I trust it will be observed. There 
is, certainly, some super-ruling Providence which has 
brought us into existence, and which will ultimately ac- 
complish the ends for which we were created, not only as 
individuals, but as a people. Nothing can, therefore, be 
lost by recognizing the obligation which we owe to the 
Supreme Being — by it much may be gained." With all 
respect for magistracy, I call that an extraordinary 
document. He is not altogether confident about it, but 
on the whole is inclined to think that " some super-ruling 
Providence " may be addressed with thanks, especially 
since nothing can be lost, and something may be gained 
by the act ! The idea of " making something " out of 
Thanksgiving carries our national propensity quite to a 
1* 



IO 



Thanksgiving. 



ludicrous extreme ; and the words "loss " and "gain," if 
they do not convey the nicest sense of religious obligation, 
certainly suggest an eye to the " main chance," as an 
apology for the rendering of thanks ! 

We are certainly a most astonishing nation ! We 
are very tenacious of our old British privilege of grum- 
bling. If weather and business and politics kept along 
smooth and prosperous all the time, very many would be 
thrown out of occupation. Croaking is their profession, 
and making themselves unhappy is their habit. A man 
ought to have a very steady head who reads nothing but 
American newspapers. He becomes familiar with excite- 
ment and apprehension, and is all the while wondering 
what will come to pass next. Mr. Miller, who, a few 
years ago, broached the theory that the world was nigh 
its end, and like " Judas of Galilee, in the days of the 
taxing, drew away much people after him," could have 
succeeded with this notion nowhere else so well as in 
these United States of America. Such things are in- 
digenous to our soil. A country like our own, stretching 
over so many degrees of latitude and longitude, through 
such varieties of climate, hot and cold, dry and wet, with 
such diversities of interest and manners among a hetero- 
geneous population, and with such artificial facilities for 
flashing the report of everything which occurs on a vast 
continent backwards and forwards, and bringing it, every 
few minutes, upon the retina of every man's eye ; why one 
might be excused who should live in a constant expecta- 
tion of the world's catastrophe. Rumors of a comet 
whisking its fiery tail among the stars and certain to de- 
molish our planet upon such a day of the calendar ; a 



Memories and Habits. 



1 1 



tornado upsetting houses, fences and forests ; corn in the 
last of June, all over the West, not more than three inches 
high, when it should have been as many feet, alarming 
the country with the certainty of a famine ; now a drought 
which bakes the furrows and burns up the pastures ; now 
rains, excessive and continuous beyond all the memories 
of the " oldest inhabitant ; " a tremendous inundation of 
the Mississippi ; a cold snap in May, which kills all the 
fruit ; a popular election, when the very foundations of 
society are moved, the sea upturning its discolored depths; 
mobs in Baltimore and New York, bringing out the mili- 
tary ; senators, counsellors, judges — names so venerable in 
the beginning — accused of corruption and venality ; good 
old philanthropic and ecclesiastical bodies rent asunder; 
Shem, Ham, and Japheth pelting one another with hard 
recriminations, and the air filled with all the menaces and 
terrors of the old prophets ; to-day, a plethora of money, 
eager to buy up the whole continent, and all the islands 
and countries which lie adjacent thereto ; and to-morrow, 
a " panic " before which the bags of gold in all the bank- 
vaults collapse and shrivel up, like those of wind which 
Eolus sent to Homer's hero ; verity, one might think 
the world was coming to an end, twenty times in the 
course of a twelvemonth ! But in some way, I know 
not how it is, we get along marvellously well. The sun 
rises and sets ; the stars are not jostled out of their steady 
orbits ; the months are not thrown out of step in their 
orderly procession ; the seasons follow each other serenely 
and honestly ; the sign of the covenant is in the heavens, 
bright and beautiful as when the mothers from the ark 
lifted their babes aloft to "bless the bow of God;" all 



12 



Thanksgiving. 



the heathenish signs in the Zodiac do not prevent the 
mighty monarch of day from bringing the year about, "fill- 
ing our hearts with food and gladness ; " and on Thanks- 
giving Day, in the golden autumn, multitudes of people, 
in the temples of religion and in their homes, meet to- 
gether with more reason and occasion for gratitude — if 
they were wise enough to know it — than any nation upon 
the face of the earth. " The Lord hath done great things 
for us, whereof we are thankful." If there is one peril 
more than another which threatens our prosperity, it is 
that indifference to our mercies which might provoke God 
to withdraw them. May God incline us more and more 
to that unambitious, unselfish, contented, cheerful, thank- 
ful temper, which is at once a medicine and a feast, an 
ornament and a protection. 

One of the chief advantages, we are told, of the na- 
tional festivity of the Hebrew, was that, by friendly inter- 
course between different tribes, it promoted a spirit of 
common patriotism. If Thanksgiving would but be 
observed in a becoming spirit, how much would it ac- 
complish in the way of purifying and strengthening the 
sentiment of nationality, which was fostered by ancestral 
memories, cemented by the blood of our fathers, and 
wrought into the structure of our continent by the hand 
of God, in the flow of rivers, the clasp of lakes and ridges, 
and the embracing arm of an unbroken sea-board. 

An excellent minister of my acquaintance is in the 
habit of selecting the texts of his Thanksgiving sermons 
out of the Book of Lamentations. The elegies of the 
weeping prophet are a part of the Sacred Volume, and 
frequent enough are the occasions when they may be used 



Memories and Habits. 



J 3 



with utmost pertinency. But so it happens that " Thanks- 
giving " — the only day in our calendar of the kind — is the 
one in which dirges are not so appropriate as carols. Its 
true design is not to furnish the pulpit with an opportu- 
nity for pelting the civil magistracy, nor for indulging in 
lugubrious complaints and apprehensions as to the con- 
dition and prospects of political affairs ; but specifically to 
rehearse those acts of the Divine goodness which should 
inspire us with gratitude and incline us to a cheerful ex- 
pression of thanks. That man who, in the worst condi- 
tion of affairs, cannot discover material enough for praise, 
is already in a morbid and most deplorable state. 

This festival was first appointed by a people proverbi- 
ally parsimonious in the designation of holidays. With the 
exception of " Election Day," and the " Fourth of July," 
it was the one only holiday of the year. " New Year " 
came and passed in the New England States with no 
recognition, save in the present of a new primer, and a 
vague impression that it was the time for a boy to make 
good resolutions. But the last Thursday in November 
gathered to itself all fragrant and pleasant associations. 
What extraordinary sermons ; what extraordinary anthems, 
on that day in the old " Meeting House ! " * Without re- 
proof, one could smile, on that day, at the wonderful per- 
formances of the choir in those old fugue tunes in which 
the several parts were perpetually chasing each other 
in a hard race, till they came in at the close, with a gen- 
eral making up on satisfactory terms ; and even at the 

* This name for a church is not of New England origin, as is 
generally supposed, for the classic Addison uses it in the Spectator. 



1 4 Thanksgiving. 

sermon too, when the minister — that man of black — did 
not seem so ghostly as in other days, but descending from 
high mysteries, talked of passing events and familiar 
things, in a style which kept his hearers awake without the 
aid of physical appliances ; and so the day which went 
forth with joy was led in at night with peace. ~" 

The reader will infer that the foundations of the au- 
thor's mind were laid in happy memories and associations 
with the Day and the Habit of Thanksgiving. 

Sufficiently compensated will he be if anything shall 
be found in these pages, which may serve as a few grains 
of frankincense on that oblation which, he trusts, will 
burn pure and bright on all our altars and our hearths, 
on each return of Thanksgiving Day. 



DAILY MARVELS. 



Blessed be the Lord, who daily loadeth us with benefit 

Ps. 68 

H/xepa ttj fyuepa epevyerai py]}xa. 

^aA. 477. 



Daily Marvels. 



l 7 



I. 

DAILY MARVELS. 

In one of those books from the pen of Mrs. Barbauld, 
and her accomplished brother, Dr. Aiken — " Evenings at 
Home " — once the delight of childhood, is a chapter en- 
titled, " Travellers' Wonders." The children of a family 
group are represented as urging their father to recite 
to them some stories of the wonderful things he had 
seen in his many voyages. They had themselves read 
the famous travels of Mr. Gulliver, and the Adventures 
of Sinbad the Sailor, and, of course, their ears were 
erect to hear of something not less remarkable than 
" The Loadstone Mountain," the " Valley of Diamonds," 
or the people of Lilliput and Brobdignag. Complying 
with their request, he gave them a minute description of 
a certain country he had once visited, of the habits of the 
people — their dwellings, their dress, their food, their man- 
ners, and customs ; and it was not till the evening was 
far advanced that the listeners detected that, under that 
thin pretence and disguise of marvel, they had been en- 
tertained with an accurate account of themselves, and 
their own native land. 

Something akin to this I now propose. I mount no 
telescope through which to observe what Jeremy Taylor 



i8 



Thanksgiving. 



has called the " great constellations of God's goodness 3 " 
let us look at objects nearer to ourselves, assured that the 
greatest marvels in the universe are those which fail to 
strike us as marvels, because of their commonness. The 
truly great things of the Divine goodness are not to be 
sought for in the affairs of empires, or in the extraordinary 
events of our own lives, but in those manifold arrangements 
which are essential to our daily existence, but which, be- 
cause of their constancy, are too commonly left out of our 
enumeration. How many things, if we would sum them 
up, must conspire to put us in a state of ease ! How 
many things, which must all go right, and that for all the 
time, to keep our bodies and minds in moderate comfort ! 
Let what we call a misfortune, an accident befall us, it 
becomes the topic of remark, the occasion of sympathy, 
for it is an extraordijiary thing, thereby reminding us that 
it is the exception to that common course of providential 
dealing, to which we become sensible only by an oc- 
casional interruption. 

Instead of straining after what is remote and uncom- 
mon, suppose that we should begin the day, and mention 
over a few of those many blessings which compose the 
usual course of our personal life. 

The morning has come, and we awake, refreshed and 
invigorated by sleep. Did we pause to consider how great 
a benefit is healthful sleep? The inspired Psalmist, 
amid the many imperial mercies which crowned him as 
king, forgot not the mention of this : " I laid me clown, and 
slept ; I awaked ; for the Lord sustained me." Again, 
amid the many afflictions which burdened him, this one is 
specified as very great : " Thou boldest mine eyes waking? 



Daily Marvels. 



i 9 



Any one who has been in the course of his life, from 
any cause, subject to protracted vigils, will understand 
this language. The eye held waking, the eye-ball hot 
and hard, and the brain strung to its tightest tension ; the 
clock tolling off the hours, the day at length returning, 
and no sleep ! An occasional loss of this great restorer 
is followed by temporary inconvenience, but let it be pro- 
tracted beyond all relief, and madness and death ensue. 
Consider how many causes might intrude to deprive you 
of your customary sleep. Bodily pain, mental agitation, 
convulsions of nature, perils from fire, and violence ; the 
sickness and suffering of others. 

The careful Betty the pillow beats, 

And airs the blankets, and smooths the sheets, 

And gives the mattress a shaking — 
But vainly Betty performs her part, 
If a ruffled head and a rumpled heart, 

As well as the couch, want making ! 

Neither is it by any effort or skill of our own that 
sleep visits our eyelids. Pursue it, strive to overtake it, 
and it flees from you. The best account we can give of 
it, when sound and sweet, is this : " I laid me down, and 
slept.'' It is the gift of a beneficent Providence. It is 
His own hand which draws the curtain, subdues the glare 
of the sun, and hushes all the noise of the world. The 
involuntary functions of life go on more calmly, more 
smoothly than ever. The lungs heave, the heart keeps 
on without your thought or care ; startled by no alarm, 
agitated by no peril, you lie quietly in the soft mystery ; 
the exhausted energy of life is recruited ; that which is 



20 



Thanksgiving. 



wasted is supplied, that which was wearied is restored, 
and you awake like a strong man to run a race. As 
Bunyan's Pilgrim, in the large chamber which looked to 
the sunrising, and was called Peace, awoke and sung, 
leave not your chamber without an ascription of gratitude 
to the world's great Watchman for the gift of sound and 
refreshing sleep. 

And how were you awakened ? The light of the sun 
gently touched your eyelids and they opened. The light 
— the light of day — the common light of the morning, 
what shall we say of its beauty, its wondrous composition, 
its value, and its blessing? Wonder not that Milton, 
detained so long in that obscure sojourn with " the Stygian 
council," in the opening books of his immortal epic, 
should begin the book which follows with the apostrophe : 

Hail, holy light, offspring of heaven, first-born ! 

For if, by some sudden interruption of nature, for 
which we could not account, a horror of great darkness, 
like that which plagued the land of Egypt in the day of 
divine wrath, should settle upon us ; if, when clock and 
chronometer announced that the time for sun-rising had 
returned, no sun should appear, and slow-paced hours 
and days should follow one after another, and neither sun 
nor moon nor stars should break the frightful gloom, and 
panic should seize the world, as certainly it would, and 
business should come to an end, and life lose its motion, 
and men's hearts had failed from looking for what was 
coming to pass ; if, after such an extraordinary and terrific 
withdrawal of the light, it should again break upon the 



Daily Marvels. 



21 



world, kissing the hill-tops, and then come pouring over 
into valleys, illuminating every recess, and bathing the globe 
with its joy, how would the world's population together 
lift up their shouts of gladness for the return of such a 
visitant! Light — image of beauty, image of gladness — 
how wondrously is it compounded — painting everything 
it touches in such variety of colors. How remote its 
birth-place, how long its journey of kindness ! Yet though 
it travels so far, and so fast, accumulating power as it goes, 
it is so soft, so safe, that it impinges not on the delicate 
eye, nor inflicts mischief on the most sensitive surface. 
To give us this cheerful illumination, to furnish light for 
the poor man's toil, what a vast and costly machinery is 
employed ! The whole planetarium of the heavens is pre- 
served in proper equilibrium, attraction, and motion — the 
sun, like a mighty monarch, leading forth his train of at- 
tendant orbs, and scattering joy in his path. "Truly, the 
light is sweet ; and a pleasant thing it is to behold the 
sun." Let us not forget the blessing and the wonder. 

Shut out by no walls, penetrating into the tightest 
compartment, on fleetest wings, invisible to the eye, 
comes another visitor, the vital tonic air. So curiously 
is it composed that, if there were the slightest deviation 
from the right proportions, we must gasp and die. Many 
seem to be afraid of it, just as they shun others of their 
best friends, but it does not resent the insult ; it follows 
us with its kindly offices, tripping down to the lowest cell 
of the lungs, playing scavenger to the blood ; throwing 
in fuel to the flame of life ; and verily, if we did not put 
so many slights on this aerial visitant which has come so 
far to see us, trying so hard as we do to avoid it or con- 



22 



Thanksgiving, 



taminate it, fewer hard words would be spoken in this 
irritable world; fewer infirmities of body and mind 
would there be, and much more heart and tone to our 
daily and annual thanksgiving. 

The bare mention of water — the water which we drink, 
the water in which we bathe, suggests a world of wonders. 
Two invisible spirits, travelling alone, each intent on 
burning up the world, meet in the upper air, agree to 
forget their direful purpose, enter into partnership and 
descend together in a new form, to refresh and bless the 
world and its inhabitants. We waste it, we throw it away, 
we despise it, we count it the meanest and cheapest of 
all things, but it is one of the greatest wonders in God's 
laboratory. When we stop to think of it, pleasant sights 
and pleasant sounds are associated with it. In the drip 
of the rain, the glitter of the dew, the tinkling of the foun- 
tain, the splash of the brook, the coolness of the well, the 
tumble of the cascade, the thunder of the cataract, the 
mirrored surface of the lake, the spirit of the mist, the 
expanse of the ocean, we will never see it, touch it, use 
it again without a thought of wonder and of gratitude. 

Refreshed by these constant visitants, sleep, light, 
air, and water, you invest yourself with suitable and 
comfortable clothing. There is not an article you wear 
which has not in it a lesson of advanced civili- 
zation. The commonest pin reminds you that you have 
conveniences which would have astonished kings and 
queens dependent on the product of the thorn-bush. It 
would be too much to assert that our habiliments are not 
sometimes grotesque and absurd ; that fashion will not 
now and then inaugurate some appendage not altogether 



Daily Marvels. 



2 3 



the most picturesque or comfortable ; but look at a Hot- 
tentot or a New Zealander, scantily clad, horribly dis- 
figured with plaited grasses and coarsest skins, and then at 
your own persons clad in garments so curious in material, 
excluding cold without impeding motion, befitting in 
shape, that savages almost invariably imagine the dress 
of a civilized man to be a part of the man himself. The 
skins of herds which roam on other continents, subjected 
to the processes of chemistry ; the little pod bursting 
with its snowy treasure, growing in the States of the 
South, the transportation of which employs countless 
fleets, and in the price of which the variation of a penny 
a pound affects the commerce of the world ; the fleeces 
of the flock, the manufacture of which into cloth, by the 
nimble fingers of steam and machinery, bring before 
you the sources of national wealth ; the little worm 
which weaves its own shroud and tomb of silk, bequeath- 
ing to us a moral lesson, of consuming ourselves in 
weaving garments for others ; the little instrument com- 
pounded of wheels and springs, of steel, and jewels and 
gold, and a few numerals figured on its face, which you 
put in your pocket, and which promises to tell you, while 
you are busy,what the sun is about, and how fast the nim- 
ble-footed hours, minutes, and seconds are tripping away ; 
all these and a thousand other things, combined in our 
daily raiment, suggest the marvels which are connected 
with our commonest conveniences. 

You descend from your chamber, and will you not 
bestow one thought of gratitude for the use of your limbs 
and senses ? I ask for nothing quite so elaborate as that 
argument for the goodness of God which you will find 



24 



Thanksgiving. 



drawn out in the treatises of Paley, on the articulation of 
the joints, and the structure of the eye ; or by Sir Charles 
Bell on the vital endowments of the hand. 

You comprehend the joy of the lame man, healed at 
the gate Beautiful, by the Apostle ; he ran and leaped, and 
praised God. How natural his joy ! his ankles receiv- 
ing strength, and he jumping and running in the use of 
his new-found liberty. And yet, you have had the use ot 
your limbs for the whole of life. Instead of being a 
cripple, carried by others from place to place, when you 
were a child, your footsteps were on the hill, in the wood, 
along the brook, across the fields, and this very morning, 
your limbs bore you up and down the stairs, very likely 
more than one at a step. 

Painters have studied long and hard to catch the ex- 
pression which must have overspread the face of Blind 
Bartimeus, at the very moment when he was restored to 
sight by the miraculous touch of Christ. First wonder, 
then confusion ; men and trees blended promiscuously ; at 
length a quick bright flash of ecstacy — for he saw clearly, 
saw the face of his Lord, saw the faces of friends, and 
all at last was the glow of serene and unmingled grati- 
tude. But which is the greater mercy — to be restored to 
sight after long blindness, or never to have known what 
it was to be blind at all ? 

You join the family group and interchange friendly 
salutations. What a wonder is that which just entered 
your ear, and fell from your mouth — Articulate speech i 
Sometimes a transatlantic stranger will visit our country 
to exhibit his skill upon a musical instrument, and cities 
are agape at the tripping trills and brilliant bravuras 



Daily Marvels. 



2 5 



which burn under his fingers. Boast not of that adroit- 
ness in the use of finger and thumb on keys of ivory, 
till you have considered more the flexibility, variations 
and compass of the instrument which God has created 
for the utterance of language, and the many years which 
are requisite in learning to play upon it. With what 
delight does the ear of a child catch the first intelli- 
gent sounds which are made by the wonderful organ it 
has just discovered in its throat ! He breathes on it again, 
more than ever delighted at each experiment ; now with 
this tone and now with that, becoming familiar with every 
stop and string, pleased whenever it acquires the utter- 
ance of a new note or word, till at length it will coo, and 
chatter, and hum, and talk and sing, like a popinjay twit- 
tering about the eaves, and all for the simple pleasure 
which it finds in its own proficiency. Think it not strange 
that a child talks as it does with little regard to sense. 
It is tuning that instrument which God has called the 
"glory" of our frame, and years will be necessary before 
it comes out a master of the great and wonderful art of 
talking. The body is not the tomb or the prison of the 
soul. " Ear-gate " and " mouth-gate " are open, words 
pass and repass, tones become the vehicle of sentiment, 
society is established, and in the power of communicating 
thought lies the great bond and cement of life. 

And what were the words which first greeted you this 
morning ? Kindly inquiries after your health. And you 
were able to reply, with thanks for the question, that you 
were well — very well. Hold that word a moment. It 
drops frcm your lips many times a day. Do not think the 
time wasted which is spent in inquiries and answers, 
2 



26 



Thanksgiving. 



whenever you meet a friend, in regard to health ; for now 
we touch what is absolutely essential. Sickness overtakes 
you, the heart works irregularly, the lungs heavily, the 
nerves are sensitive and irritable, digestion enfeebled, the 
brain plethoric and excitable, and pain gnaws in the mar- 
row and the joints. What shall be done that health may 
be restored ? No exertion is spared, no expenditure of 
money is deemed extravagant ; all medical skill is sum- 
moned, voyages planned, every healing spring and genial 
clime are visited, and all that by some means health may 
be regained. Yet how many years of uninterrupted 
health have you enjoyed, when it was not necessary for 
you to watch the clouds, or analyze your food, or weigh 
your clothing, or take exercise by rule ; when you were 
not conscious that such a thing as a nerve existed, or a 
stomach either, save from the satisfaction with which its 
simple and healthy wants were supplied. That illness 
should occasionally enfeeble us, is not half so wonderful 
as this, that we should pass through so many vicissitudes 
of heat and cold, moisture and drought, labor and leisure, 
without detriment ; that we should carry this delicate harp 
of a thousand chords through all the roughness, violence, 
and collisions of the world without breaking it. Never 
reply again to a kind morning inquiry after your health, 
that you are well, very well — without an emphasis on the 
word which intends a special gratitude to the Almighty. 

And who were those with whom you interchanged this 
morning's salutations ? The living reduplications of yourself. 
Father, mother, son, daughter, husband, wife, brother, sister, 
friend. Those who know you, trust you, love you. Those 
who are identified with your interests, interwoven with your 



Daily Marvels. 



27 



life ; who understand you as no others can, who give 
you their sympathy and confidence as no others will. 
These are they who make up that endeared circle of home, 
never to be thought of without a gentler and happier mood. 
It was your own child who gave you a morning kiss, your 
own parent who gave you a cordial blessing. It is not 
strange that you begin each day with such a good heart 
and courage, for you have a home which recruits the 
motives of daily life, to which weariness will return for 
repose, care come back for composure ; the retreat where 
gloom is chased away by smiles, and your heart feasts on 
those nameless, numberless acts of kindness, which are 
the more to be valued because unbought and unpretend- 
ing. Think what a hard, uncouth, rough, coarse, vulgar 
drudge you would be, without those kind and gentle com- 
panionships which now soften and mould your character. 
It is not strange that the great metaphysician, Jonathan 
Edwards, should have written so profoundly on disinter- 
ested benevolence. The only wonder is, that the severity of 
his style did not oftener relax into something like humor ; 
when he, the greatest thinker of his age, had for his wife 
one whom he has himself described after this manner : 
" You could not persuade her," writes he, " to do any- 
thing wrong or sinful, if you could give her all the world. 
She is of wonderful gentleness, calmness, and universal 
benevolence of mind. She will sometimes go about from 
place to place, singing sweetly ; and seems to be always 
full of joy and pleasure, and no one knows for what. She 
loves to be alone, walking in the fields and groves, and 
seems to have some one invisible always conversing with 
her." The metaphysician metamorphosed into the poet, 



28 



Thanksgiving. 



without his knowing it. Such is the alchemy of home, 
that we are led into many virtues by means of our 
pleasures. 

And where was it, that amid all these other mercies of 
Providence you began this day ? Within your own dwell- 
ing, with its innumerable conveniences and comforts. 
A house is not a home, but a home implies that there 
is a house. The style of human dwellings is an index 
of the varied stages of civilization. Nomadic tribes 
make use of movable tents ; savages have holes or huts, exe- 
crable with filth. The " House of Diomede," as it is called, 
at Pompeii, by its very structure, with so much of court 
and corridor, and so little room within, reveals the idea 
of Roman life — out of doors and public, with small do- 
mestic conveniences. Erasmus accounts for the preva- 
lence of the plague in England, in his day, by the con- 
dition of the houses. Very few in all the kingdom had 
chimneys for the passage of the smoke. Rushes and 
straw covered the floors, accumulating discomfort, day 
and night. It is not strange that in such circumstances 
Lord Bacon brought his imperial imagination to contrive 
whatever was desirable in domestic architecture. In the 
remarkable description from his pen of the " House of 
Solomon," in the New Atlantis, which was received by his 
contemporaries as a mere rhodomontade, we have what 
has since been proved to be the far-reaching vision of 
science, for there is scarcely a contrivance there imagined 
for warming, lighting, ventilating, and furnishing a human 
habitation, which is not in common use in our own dwell- 
ings. Observe the house where you live, arranged for 
convenience, divided off into separate compartments ; it is 



Daily Marvels. 



not a hermit's cell nor yet a tavern ; privacy without soli- 
tude, society without turnpike publicity. By a beautiful 
combination of sand and an alkali, your windows are fur- 
nished with that transparent material through which the 
light passes but not the cold. The world is seen but not 
admitted. Philosophy and art, no longer divorced, find 
their true dignity in discovering, inventing, and arranging 
those many conveniences which contribute to the warmth, 
economy, and healthiness of human habitations. When 
the ancients lost their fire from their hearths and altars, 
they lighted it again, by means of lenses, from the sun. 
Some may remember that when the same calamity befell 
a family in olden time, resort was had to that one of the 
household who had acquired the knack of eliciting and 
catching the welcome spark from flint and steel. As to 
that great convenience which modern chemistry has 
given us, so economical of time and patience, by which 
light and fire are afforded us in a second, there is but one 
drawback to gratitude. In ancient times, the smoking of 
a pipe by an old man, in the chimney-corner, was the very 
image of cosy comfort ; but the convenience of portable 
fire, carried in the pocket, in all places, seems to have 
suggested certain habits, even to the children, sud- 
denly converting a whole generation into peripatetic 
chimneys. 

Two things, in the domestic arrangements of our metro- 
politan life, are greatly to be missed and regretted — 
a fireplace and a barn. A city stable is an adjunct of 
wealth ; an appendage of luxury, set apart for horses, and 
grooms, and footmen. That is not the idea at all. The 
place we speak of was a part of home. There was it that 



3° 



Thanksgiving. 



we grew familiar with the " honest faces of animals ; " 
there was the meadow-sweet scent of the hay ; there was 
the bright golden corn stripped from its overcoat of felt, 
and its underdress of silk ; there was the thud of the 
thresher's flail ; there rung the merry laugh of boyhood 
and girlhood in their holiday freedom — alas ! how many 
of those clear, sweet voices were silent years ago in their 
small graves, while we are now men and women. There, 
on the south side of that old, weather-beaten, unpainted 
barn, the sun would shine brighter and warmer than any- 
where else, and we and the cattle chewed together the 
cud of contentment. 

To many of the children of our day the fireside is 
rather an allegorical expression. To others, it is an ac- 
tual history. A hole in the wall, through which the heat 
passes, attaches to itself no ideas of sociability. The 
old fireplace, with its generous supply of clean, honest 
wood, its crackling blaze, its ample room, symbolized 
the dwelling-place of cheerfulness, the home of love, and 
the altar of religion. There was it, when the twilight 
shadows had come, and candle and lamp were as yet un- 
lighted, and the reflection of the flame was dancing on 
the wall, that you sat and mused — and if, perchance, as 
the wood sizzled on the hearth, your mind fell upon some 
sad and pensive train, some gleam of the mystery of life, 
you laid your head upon your mother's lap, and was 
calm ; and when the evening had gone, the large ruddy 
coals of the log, brighter than those of England's Christ- 
mas Yule, were laid in their bed of ashes, and the gray- 
haired sire commended the group to heaven for protec- 
tion ; love, peace, comfort, joy and prayer, all beside 



Daily Marvels. 



31 



that old fireplace, where the gray-haired love and pray 
no more. 

Animals feed alone, greedily crunching each his own 
bone and portion. To eat in silence is a sign of bar- 
barism. The table where you sat this morning is not 
the crib and rack where you eat what is necessary to 
support life. It is the focus of all courtesy, the symbol 
of all hospitality. Not .to speak of the coarse and dis- 
gusting articles of food which those in the most abject 
condition of poverty have been compelled to resort to for 
the sustenance of life, compare the delicate, nutritious, 
palatable food upon your family table this morning, with 
the beef and the beer which composed the breakfast 
of Queen Elizabeth and her nobility. While thousands 
upon thousands have actually perished from starvation, 
you never knew what it was to be hungry and in want 
all your life. You have had enough and to spare. Over 
and above all that is needful, as if to give us special 
proofs of His goodness, Divine Providence has spread 
before us, every day, whatever would give a pleasure to 
the palate. The cup of which Cowper sang, which 
" cheers but not inebriates," China's fragrant leaf ; the 
juices of the tropical cane crystallized into sparkling 
lumps ; the corn which you watched in its summer 
growth, with its ribbons of green, and its tassels of yel- 
low floss ; the wheat which you paused to admire while 
it was yet green, the wind passing over it, and bending 
it in graceful waves as if it were a sea of life ; all the 
"treasures hid in the sand," these and whatever other 
material there may be in the sea, the air, the stall and the 
field, suited to the use and pleasure of man — all these are 



32 



Thanksgiving. 



your daily aliment in this land of God's exuberant 
bounty. 

While you were sleeping during the night, so com- 
pletely divorced from the world, the great world itself was 
at work to prepare for you one of its greatest wonders. 
It lies waiting for you upon your breakfast-table — so 
common and worthless a thing after it has been read, 
that it will be crumpled up and burned, or serve to wrap 
the refuse meat which is dropped into the beggar's basket. 
Yet in fact it is a microcosm, the world made smaller, 
and brought within the compass of the newspaper now in 
your hands. The fleet steamers upon the ocean, the 
ships on every river and sea, the camels and dromedaries 
of the East, the swift-footed trapper of the West, the 
ponderous engines which tramp across the land, the 
electric wires which throb over the land, and beneath 
the surges of the Atlantic — every instrument, every agent, 
every vehicle that can convey intelligence — explorers, 
adventurers, politicians, thinkers, speakers, actors, dream- 
ers, advertisers, all at the top of their speed, and huddling 
together the world's wisdom and the world's folly, all 
that this world has done, and spreading it out before 
your eyes in that reeking sheet, as if it were a moving 
panorama of the whole earth. Cowper has inimitably 
described the marvel in his lines upon the daily news- 
paper. 

This folio of four pages, happy -work ! 
Which not e'en critics criticise ; that holds 
Inquisitive attention, while I read, 
Fast bound in chains of silence, which the fair, 
Tho' eloquent themselves, yet fear to break : 



Daily Marvels. 



33 



What is it but a map of busy life, 

Its fluctuations, and its vast concerns ? 

Here runs the mountainous and craggy ridge 

That tempts Ambition. On the summit see 

The seals of office glitter in his eyes ; 

He climbs, he pants, he grasps them ! At his heels — 

Close at his heels, a demagogue ascends, 

And with a dexterous jerk soon twists him down, 

And wins them, but to lose them in his turn. 

Here rills of oily eloquence in soft 

Meanders lubricate the course they take : 

The modest speaker is ashamed and grieved 

To engross a moment's notice ; and yet begs, 

Begs a propitious ear for his poor thoughts, 

However trivial all that he conceives. 

Sweet bashfulness ! it claims at least this praise : 

The dearth of information and good sense, 

That it foretells us, always comes to pass. 

Cataracts of declamation thunder here ; 

There forests of no meaning spread the page, 

In which all comprehension wanders lost : 

While fields of pleasantry amuse in these 

With merry descants on a nation's woes. 

The rest appears a wilderness of strange 

But gay confusion ; roses for the cheeks, 

And lilies for the brows of faded age, 

Teeth for the toothless, ringlets for the bald, 

Heaven, earth and ocean, plundered of their sweets— 

Nectareous essences, Olympian dews, 

Sermons, and city feasts, and favorite airs, 

Ethereal journeys, submarine exploits, 

And Katerfelto, with his hair on end 

At his own wonders, wondering for his bread. 



Loquacious as we have been — many as are the mar- 
vels which have passed under our notice, we have not yet 

2* 



34 



Thanksgiving. 



stepped out of our own dwelling. Our catalogue must 
somewhere find a limit. But should you take the hand 
of your child on his way to school, perhaps you might be 
thinking that philosophies which centuries ago were as 
lofty and remote as the clouds, are now dripping in 
rain and dew, producing fruits and food. When you 
receive your letters from the post-office, if not too much 
pressed and worried with affairs, perhaps you might 
bestow a thought upon this, cheap wonder, than which no- 
thing is more amazing to uncivilized man — the thinkings 
of other minds, the affections of other hearts made port- 
able by means of paper and pen, and packed away in 
leathern pouches, to talk in lieu of the absent and re- 
mote ; or, if business should take you of a sudden to a 
neighboring State, do not accomplish your hundred miles 
and back before your evening meal without observing 
that what was once described as the wildest freak of fancy 
in the Arabian Nights Entertainments, has actually come 
to pass ; for if I remember the dream aright, it was but 
to seat yourself upon a certain mechanical horse, and 
pull a plug, and away you were transported through the 
air with the velocity of the wind. 

But the greatest blessing and wonder of all is reserved 
for the latest mention. Before you left your dwelling this 
morning you opened a book — a veritable book, with 
pages and covers, paper and type — a book, haloed round 
about, if it was an old family copy, with a thousand 
domestic memories, and within inscribed all over with the 
lessons of celestial truth. The God who made us has 
so condensed and concentrated therein all his wisdom, 
and all his love, that it was needful to make but one 



Daily Marvels. 



35 



book, and that one he calls the Book — the Bible. That 
book, for the preparation of which the Spirit who brooded 
over the great deep to form this world of order and 
brightness hath moved the minds of holy men, guiding 
and inspiring their diamond pens ; that book which has 
been transcribed with slow and consummate care by 
cloistered men, counting every word and syllable and 
letter, as if each were a royal jewel ; that book, which in 
ancient times was esteemed so rare and costly, that for 
a single copy men bartered away their castles and their 
herds, but which is now so cheap and common, that it is 
multiplied and scattered about, thick as the " leaves of 
Vallambrosa ; " that book which despotism has tried to kill, 
tearing, burning, burying it, but which, like the milk-white 
hind of the fable, has come out pure and brave from 
blood and fire and battle, carrying in its train all the 
light and liberty and hope of the world ; that book which, 
like a chart, lays down your safe and happy course, day 
by day, furnishing you with all the wisdom you need for 
this life, and all the promises for the life to come ; which 
inspires hope, pardons sin, comforts sorrow, diffuses light, 
invigorates toil, prompts to duty, illuminates the grave, 
and points to immortality ; this one incomprehensible 
gift of God, wondrous as if it were given us to-day, fresh 
and sparkling with the dews and fragrance of heaven; 
precious beyond gold and rubies, rich and costly enough 
in itself to wake the thanksgivings of the world ; this 
book lies in every room of your dwelling, and more is it 
for us than if an angel sat in our chamber, and walked 
at our sides, to direct us in the way. That book, which 
pours its light alike into the rich man's mansion, the poor 



36 Thanksgiving, 



man's cottage, the arches of the cathedral, the cloisters 
of great monasteries, and the pauper's attic ; if there 
had been but one man on the earth who possessed it, 
how would the world's population encircle him with 
wonder and envy ! You have read it to your children, 
that you might catch the key-note of an endless thanks- 
giving. We have begun with the commonest, the cheap- 
est blessings of our existence, and from waking in the 
morning, with light and air, and food and raiment, and 
health and reason, and soundness of limb and sense, 
with home and speech and friends, ar\d blessings innu- 
merable, our feet, ere we have stepped out into the great 
world, crowded with benefits, public, political, and na- 
tional, have touched that bridge of Christian Revelation, 
which connects the humblest habitation on the earth 
with the palace of the Great King, resplendent with 
light, and resounding with the anthems of praise. Why 
is it that, with so much given, whatever be withheld — 
with so much spared, whatever be withdrawn, perpetual 
thanks are not exhaling from our hearts ? Why do we not 
go bounding along the undulating surface of life, duty, 
trial, care, privilege, with joys playing through us like a 
sparkling sea ? " Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that 
is within me, bless his holy name." 



EXUBERANT GOODNESS. 



/c«0 5 u7rep£oAV els virep^o\i\v. — St. PAUL. 

2 Cor. iv. 17. 



II. 

EXUBERANT GOODNESS. 

In the eighth chapter of the Book of Proverbs we 
have a most lively personification of Wisdom. The 
poetry of all languages furnishes nothing more spirited 
or pleasing. Before the mountains were settled, and the 
hills brought forth ; when there were no fountains and no 
depths j when as yet the earth and the fields and the 
firmament were not ; " then," says Wisdom, " I was with 
the Almighty as one brought up with him ; and I was 
daily his delight, rejoicing always before him. Rejoicing 
in the habitable part of the earth, and my delights were 
with the sons of men." In this most animated descrip- 
tion there is one sentiment too beautiful to lie concealed 
in an imperfect translation. It occurs in that word which 
represents Wisdom as rejoicing in the presence of the 
Creator and throughout the world which he has made. 
In the original the image is that of a child playing in ex- 
cess of glee and sportiveness, in the company of its own 
parent. That is the word — playing ! Some translators, 
aiming at great exactness, have rendered it " dancing," 
and " laughing ; " but the authors of our English version, 
deeming the literal translation unsuited to the dignity of 
the personification, have contented themselves with the 



4 o 



Thanksgiving. 



more quiet word — rejoicing; but the image which the word 
presents is that of a child, the object of parental delight, 
leaping and running in exuberance of spirits, unable to 
express all its overflowing pleasure. And this is the 
figure which represents the creative power by which the 
world was made ; the pleasure of the Almighty when he 
swept the graceful curves of the globe, sloped the swell 
of the hills, wove the tresses of the woods, and gave to the 
sea its easy swing. This is the form which descends 
also to the habitable parts of the earth, as if it could not 
find room enough for its illimitable delights, playing — we 
must retain the word — like the sweet-nowings of the air all 
over the world it would bless, and making expressions, in 
every way, of its own boundless pleasure. The only 
living and true God is not like Brahma, cold, indifferent, 
and passionless, sleeping upon the stars ; the ocean is 
not so full of currents as is the heart of our Maker with 
delight, in the contemplation of his own works. 

Dr. Paley has constructed an admirable argument in 
proof of the goodness of God, from the evident design 
of what he has made. Excellent for its own purposes as 
the treatise is, its only defect is that it is set to a key too 
low. It is necessarily scholastic, and, to a certain degree, 
frigid. It might, have had more of poetic fervor without 
impairing its logic, or diluting its sound and wholesome 
sense. The lenses of the eye and the articulations of 
the bones furnish, indeed, a resistless proof of the Divine 
goodness ; but mere utility does not describe the prin- 
ciples on which the Almighty has employed his creative 
skill. Delight was in his own mind, and how much has 
he done to confer delight upon others. He has trans- 



Exuberant Goodness, 



4i 



cended all the conditions of a bare and frigid necessity. 
Ten thousand things has he made, ten thousand things 
has he given, which were never necessary at all, the expres- 
sions of his own superabundance, and the proof that he 
seeks our special pleasure. The genius of Jeremy Taylor, 
exuberant as a vine spreading all over the courts of the 
Lord, was better suited to discourse on such a theme than 
was William Paley, even though the excellent Dean was 
the embodiment of all cheerfulness and good humor. 

Mr. Carlyle has somewhere said, that a man should 
put himself at zero, and then reckon every degree ascend- 
ing from that point as an occasion for thanks. Precisely 
on this scale do the Scriptures compute our mercies. 
Demerit places us at the very nadir. Every step we take 
from the point where conscious unworthiness would 
consign us, should call for an offering of gratitude, what- 
ever envied heights may tower, unreached, above us. 
" It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed." 
" Why should a living man complain ? " So begins the 
anthem of thanks, at its lowest note of all, " We are 
alive — we are not consumed." We are all of us far, far 
above the extremest point ; therefore, let each, from the 
place where he stands, strike in with his own melody, till 
the accumulated song rises higher and higher, like the 
lark circling towards the skies. " Bless the Lord, O my 
soul, who forgiveth all thine iniquities, who healeth all thy 
diseases, who redeemeth thy life from destruction, who 
satisheth thy mouth with good things, who crowneth thee 
with loving-kindness and tender mercies." 

Standing on the very lowest conditions of content- 
ment, in possession of life, food, and raiment, every rea- 



42 Thanksgiving. 



son have we for gratitude ; how much more when we con- 
sider the acts of God's goodness which are over and 
above all that is necessary, designed solely and expressly 
for our pleasure. 

" The point to which we look, is not so much the pleas- 
ure which God enjoys in the exercise of his own powers, 
the expression of his own goodness ; though this were a 
noble theme by itself. Great delights must have thrilled 
the heart of Raphael when he had finished his immortal 
picture of the Transfiguration ; Canova and Thorwaldsen 
must have felt a joy beyond all the pleasures of sense, 
when they had brought out from the marble block the 
statues of the great and good : but this satisfaction was 
as a drop to the sea, compared to the delight of God 
when he created such minds as Milton and Newton and 
Pascal and Fenelon and Melanchthon and Herbert, or 
when he made manifestation of himself in the gospel 
of Jesus Christ, waking the harmonies of the skies, 
sweeter and louder than on the morning of creation. 
This would be a glorious theme by itself, and useful 
withal, since it would correct the theology of those who 
misunderstand the saying that God made all things for 
his own glory, as if that were ignoble, forgetting that 
what is the vanity of display in man, in God is but the ex- 
pression of Infinite Love, and the pleasure which attends 
its exercise. 

This, however, is not our theme just now, so much as 
its sister and counterpart — the manifold objects which God 
has made for our pleasure merely, above all the demands 
of necessity. The goodness of a parent is justified when 
he provides all that is useful and indispensable for his 



Exuberant Goodness. 



43 



child ; but how many things he bestows upon that child, 
for his special gratification, which are not needful at all. 
If we set out upon this course of thought, language will 
confess its inadequacy to measure the " miracles of this 
infinity." " The little drops which run over, though they 
be not much in themselves, yet they tell that the vessel 
is full, and can express the greatness of the shower no 
otherwise but by spilling, and in artificial expressions and 
runnings over." * Our cup runneth over. Sometimes we 
fall into depression, when we can hardly see that anything 
good remaineth ; we travel from Dan to Beersheba and say 
that it is all barren, but if we only had an eye to dis- 
cern what is good and beautiful, we should be astonished 
at the exuberance and profusion with which our Maker 
has furnished and decorated the world we live in. There 
are some people, good in their way, who never hear the 
word " beauty " without a revulsion, and taste is something 
to be looked upon with suspicion. It is, indeed, greatly 
to be lamented that beauty and taste have so often been 
perverted by irreligious associations ; but did it never occur 
to persons of such a temper to wonder why God has 
lavished such profuseness of beauty in all his works ? 
He has not left the walls and the rafters of the earth bare 
and sightless, but has decorated them all over with divine 
skill, and the attributes of our Maker seem not to have 
reached the region of highest joy till, passing the rugged 
acts of necessity, they disport in the free play of affluent 
generosity. 

Let us not imitate Baillie Jarvie, who could not look 
upon a sparkling lake without pronouncing it a pity that 
* Jeremy Taylor. 



44 



Thanksgiving. 



so much good soil should lie useless under the water ; 
who never could see a wood, without computing how much 
lumber it would make ; *or a moss-covered rock, without 
forecasting how much building stone it would turn out ; 
or a cataract like Terni or Niagara, without satisfying 
himself how much water-power it would supply for manu- 
facturing. It is scarcely credible how few. people, even 
in what are called the educated classes, enjoy anything. 
A recent writer in the London Quarterly tells the story 
of Lord Melbourne and a young guardsman going with 
some ladies to an entertainment. Next day the guards- 
man complained that the evening had been stupid, and 
that there had been nothing to see. " Nothing to see ! " 
exclaimed the good-tempered nobleman. "Were there 
not the lobsters in the fish-shops to look at as we went, 
along ? " Melbourne was one of the few men who knew 
how to enjoy ; and if every man would only educate his 
eye to discern beauty in common objects, and when he 
had detected it would take his wife and children to see 
it too, this world would be very different from what it 
now is. 

There are the flowers, wee things, clad in glory which 
shames the robes and regalia of kings. There was no 
necessity for their brilliant beauties, or their luxurious 
perfume ; but God has scattered them with a liberal hand 
all over the earth, precisely as you hang a gem on the 
person of your child, simply and solely for her special 
gratification. 

God might have made the earth bring forth 

Enough for great and small, 
The oak-tree and the cedar-tree, 
Without a flower at all. 



Exuberant Goodness. 



45 



We might have had enough, enough 

For every want of ours, 
For luxury, medicine and toil, 

And yet have had no flowers. 

The ore within the mountain mine 

Requireth none to grow, 
Nor doth it need the lotus-flower 

To make the river flow. 

The clouds might give abundant rain, 

The nightly dews might fall, 
And the herb which keepeth life in man 

Might yet have drunk them all. 

Then wherefore, wherefore, were they made, 

All dyed with rainbow-light, 
All fashioned with supremest grace, 

Upspringing day and night : 

Springing in valleys green and low, 

And on the mountains high, 
And in the silent wilderness 

Where no man passes by ? 

Our outward life requires them not — 
Then wherefore had they birth ? 

To minister delight to man, 
To beautify the earth." 



Distrust and despondency there cannot be, when one 
has taught his eye to read the beautiful lesson of the 
flowers ; for thus it runneth : " He that careth enough for 
me to bestow such inimitable luxuries, surely will not 
withhold what is absolutely necessary." 

So of the fruits, so pleasant to the eye and to the 
taste. God might have withheld them all, and yet no im- 



4 6 



Thanksgiving. 



putation be cast upon his generosity. The commonest 
esculent necessary for subsistence cannot grow without 
its blossom ; as if beauty invariably waited on utility. 
The homely potato cannot begin its under-ground useful- 
ness till it has sent up into the air a flower of delicate 
hue, to promise its coming ; and the corn hangs out its 
tassels of softest silk, and when the southwest wind plays 
through its tresses and banners, they wave and flaunt as 
if they had delight in the grace of motion. But when all 
the sober and honest vegetables and grains which we are. 
accustomed to regard as the necessaries of life are be- 
stowed, above and beyond them all are the fruits, which, 
for the delight they afford our every sense, must be es- 
teemed as designed to afford us a special pleasure. How 
grateful to the eye in their varied forms and colors, hang- 
ing from the vine, pendent on the tree, half hid in the 
leafy shrub, cluster, berry, pulp, juice ; red, golden, russet, 
scarlet, and all the shades between, as if all the colors of 
the sky and all the sweetness of the earth had agreed 
together to fashion something which could tell the child 
of God how much his Father delighted to please him. 

Plainly enough the ear was constructed most curious- 
ly for the transmission of sound ; and it might have sub- 
served all the necessities of life without ever having 
caught one of those strains of music, one of those sobs of 
the sea, one of those plaintive cadences of the wind, which 
now diffuse through the sensitive frame the delicious 
sense of melody. The conformation of the organ, its cells 
and tubes and drum, would have attested the skill of our 
Maker as well, if it had served only to report those dull 
sounds which relate to needful work ; but we begin to 



Exuberant Goodness. 



47 



think of something more than skill, even of goodness 
playing in its own exuberance, when, as Milton writes in 
style suited to the theme, we are 

Lapped in soft Lydian airs 
Married to immortal verse, 
Such as the meeting soul may pierce, 
In notes, with many a winding bout 
Of linked sweetness long drawn out, 
With wanton heed and giddy cunning 
The melting voice thro' mazes running, 
Untwisting all the chains that tie 
The hidden soul of harmony. 

He who can sing, or he who can feel the thrill of song, 
as Milton did at the organ, has an argument for God's 
superabundant goodness before which infidelity should 
flee away. 

"Beasts and all cattle, creeping things and flying 
fowl," objects introduced by name in one of the sacred 
lyrics, are invited to join in the chorus of universal praise. 
All these might have met the ends and offices of their 
existence, according to any scheme of utilitarianism, 
even if they had been made to plod or sleep through a 
joyless existence ; while in truth, the gambols of the 
whole animal creation are forever expressing how much 
of pleasure belongs to their lot. It is a morning in the 
spring, warm and sunny ; the air is all alive with in- 
sects, sporting in jocund life, whose existence seems to 
us nothing but pleasure ; and the birds — those teachers 
whom Christ has placed beside the lilies, whose brilliant 
plumage and graceful shapes often remind us of the 
flowers, endowed with life and motion — fairly shriek out 



4 8 



Thanksgiving, 



their delight, as they skim and sail and shoot about, as if 
making fun of all the laws of nature. " The poppies and 
the corn-blades," as we read in Sir Philip Sydney's De- 
fence of Poesy, " might chide the lark for flying so high, 
striving and straining after mere air, losing its time, and 
bringing back nothing but weary wings and an empty 
stomach," but her sweet voice and soaring wings belong 
to God, and she goes up circling higher and higher to 
pour out her jubilant song at the very gate of heaven ; 
and the " Bobolink," that jolly favorite of boyhood, would 
have performed its office as well in clearing the ground and 
trees of noxious grubs, if it had been unfurnished with 
those liquid notes which come trilling out of its throb- 
bing throat, when seated on that slender top bough which 
is even now " tilting up and down with his effort in that 
last joyous cadenza." See the lambs on the hill-side, 
walking up together so soberly, like a company of chil- 
dren making a business of play, and then of a sudden 
wheeling short about and scampering down so full of 
glee ; they would have supplied joints for your table, and 
fleeces for your coat, without that exuberant joy. The 
trout in the stream would subserve the use of man for food 
just as well if it had been made stiff and shapeless as a 
stick, instead of springing through the sparkling stream, in 
the fulness of elastic life ; and the brook itself could have 
turned a mill-wheel or watered a meadow, if it ran more 
straight and grave like an artificial canal, instead of wind- 
ing about at its own sweet will, falling every now-and-then 
over the rocks, and, like a child, laughing at its own tum- 
ble, composing itself to a more decorous deportment, and 
tripping away among the grass with so many musical 



Exuberant Goodness. 



49 



murmurs. The clover might have been just as succulent 
for pasturage, if it had not been half so fair and fragrant 
as it new is ; and the sky might have served as well for 
a canopy, if it had been one cold, melancholy blue in- 
stead of an ever-shifting panorama of royal colors, with 
sun-rising and sun-setting of imperial splendors, and spark- 
ling by night with all the glory of the stars. We begin 
now to comprehend why, in one of the Psalms, the sun 
and the moon, the waters and the stars of light, snow 
and hail, and wind and vapor, hills and trees, heights 
and depths, are summoned to the act of praising their 
Maker, for they all are but different expressions of God's 
exuberant delight. 

He who discerns with a well-trained eye what abun- 
dance of beauty is in all the works of God, will acknowl- 
edge the method by which we may cultivate the art of 
being happy. Playfulness of spirit is an expression very 
likely to be misunderstood, because we put an ill sense 
into good words ; but the true idea denoted by this ex- 
pression is grand and holy. The life of God is one of 
delight ; and man, with all his culture and attainments, 
falls short of his proper nature if he does not reach a 
positive pleasure. A disposition to find delight in all 
things is akin to high-toned religion. The beauty which 
pervades the works of God is but an image of the 
higher beauty of His moral kingdom, the harmonies and 
ravishments of that Redemption which reconciles man to 
a lost felicity. Man reaches the true life of the soul when, 
emerging from the necessary conditions of penitence, dis- 
cipline, restraint, his heart plays freely and joyfully in the 
midst of all that is fair, and generous, and noble, and 
3 



5o 



Thanksgiving. 



good. Humor is a gift of nature : it should be controlled 
and used, not destroyed. It is the oil of the machinery 
which otherwise would grate and wear. To be tho- 
roughly trained and remain thoroughly natural, like a 
child, is the rare greatness of a man. He who knows 
how to enjoy, will find so much pleasure in the simplest 
and the commonest objects, that he will never feel the 
need of an artificial stimulus. 

One argument against theatrical entertainments is, that 
they are elaborate imitations of nature. They are called 
the play, but in fact they are a toil. Of pomps and 
masquerades Goldsmith has well said that 

toiling pleasure sickens into pain, 

And e'en while fashion's brightest arts decoy, 
The heart, distrusting, asks if this be joy ? 

There is something incongruous in the idea of playing to 
fulfil a contract ; of working up the spirits by an artifi- 
cial process for which one must pay as for services ren- 
dered. Play must be simple and natural, and if we paid 
more attention to those innocent instincts with which 
Creative Wisdom has endowed us ; if tastes were simpler 
and pleasures less artificial, and our senses were quicker 
to catch the beauties which God has created so profusely, 
there would be far less difficulty than has been imagined 
in the attempt to reconcile true pleasure and religious 
obligations. 

Home is the proper centre of all innocent delights ; 
and that man is vastly to be pitied who has any pleas- 
ures greater than those which meet him in his own 
dwelling — that play-ground of the affections. What a 



Exuberant Goodness. 51 



power has she who presides over the abode, the minister 
of its beautiful tastes, whose office it is to make us good 
by means of our pleasures ! What profound wisdom, 
dressed in poetic form, in the advice of old Roger Ascham 
to Lady Jane Grey, concerning her husband — " Do 
thou talk with him, ride with him, play with him, be his 
fairy, his page, his every thing that love and poetry have 
invented ; but watch him well, sport with his fancies, turn 
them about like the ringlets on his cheeks, and if he ever 
meditate on power or ambition, go toss thy baby to his 
brow, and bring back his thoughts into his heart by the 
music of thy discourse." 

The Puritans — it would be hard to discuss such a 
subject without lugging them in — have been accused of 
being unnaturally severe and stern, and implacably hostile 
to all that was playful and beautiful. Those who make 
this charge invariably overlook the one main fact of their 
history. The struggle in which they were engaged, being 
for the right of personal liberty, they were compelled, by 
the necessities of their case, to suppress and crucify many 
an innocent and educated taste, for the very purpose 
of showing their proud defiance of despotism. When 
that lubberly fellow, King James, issued his royal com- 
mands, requiring Christian men to frequent Bear Gardens 
on the Sabbath, and obey the "Book of Sports," be not 
so shallow as to impute it to hypocrisy, when such men 
drew their faces into extraordinary length and gravity, 
and with a good will and purpose gave a nasal twang to 
conventicle hymns ; for their object was, by the boldest 
contrast, to express their resolute antagonism to tyranny. 
You would have done the same, even if you, like some of 



52 Thanksgiving. 



them, had been bred in the best universities, in the 
finest culture. You would have sacrificed your best 
tastes, as Jephtha did his own daughter, had it been neces- 
sary to defy the enemies of liberty. If despotic power 
prescribed something else, you too would do as did they 
— offensive as it was to taste — call your own fair daughters 
by the uncouth names of Patience, Perseverance, 
Effectual Calling, and Great Tribulation — your 
purpose, like theirs, being to show in the face of courts 
and cavalier frivolity, and royal enactments, that they 
gave no secondary place to religious liberty. The struggle 
ended, it was needful that nature should have its way, and 
reassert its rights. The sun will shine on the snows of 
winter, and throw its rays into the densest forests. Even 
so the long suppressed tastes for the playful and beautiful, 
which belong to our nature, gleam every now-and-then 
through the rigid severity of Puritan character. 

A good part of those feats which were ascribed to 
witchcraft in Massachusetts can be accounted for without 
the necessity of imagining any supernatural agency. It 
would be nothing extraordinary if aged men and women, 
of uncommon gravity, should complain of the sensation 
of pins sticking into their flesh, and unaccountable noises 
rumbling in the chimneys, if boyish spirits were again put 
under the pressure of a forced and unnatural seriousness. 
The fountains of nature, repressed in one place, will break 
out in another. Instead of destroying by violence, or ex- 
citing by toilsome stimulants, it is better to guide our 
impulses into the channels of a more quiet and simple, 
yet real enjoyment. 

When we have recalled what God has given us in ex- 



Exuberant Goodness. 



S3 



cess of all necessity, for the purpose of pleasing us, let us 
remember that we have taken but the first and lowest step 
leading up to a vast and glorious subject. If God has 
done so much for us here on the earth, what will he not 
do for us hereafter in heaven ? If God is so generous 
now, what will he be in the world to come ? The eye looks 
forth upon the streams and meadows and trees, and up 
to the skies, all so full of beauty, and reports that these 
material images are employed to describe that better 
country which is reserved as our eternal home. That 
heavenly world is not described in the dull lines of didac- 
tic prose. All the pleasant things in the universe are 
made to complete the promise of that ultimate enjoy- 
ment Now is it a landscape — green pastures, still 
waters, the tree of life with leaf and fruit — every image 
of contentment and delight. Now rises an imperial 
city — its gates of pearl, its foundations of precious stones, 
its streets of gold, and all the nations pouring their 
glory into it. Now is it our Father's house with many 
mansions ; a festive board, with unmeasured plenty ; with 
songs of joy, and garlands of gladness upon the head. 
The true end of existence is "FULNESS OF JOY," 
and " RIVERS OF PLEASURE " at the right hand of 
God. 



H O M E . 



For there is a yearly sacrifice there for all the family. 

i Sam. 20 : 6. 



III. 



HOME. 

Absent, on a certain occasion, from the table of Saul, 
and knowing that his absence would be noticed and mis- 
represented by the jealous king, David directed his friend 
Jonathan to say, when inquiry was made for him, that he 
had gone down to Bethlehem to a family gathering. " For 
there is a yearly sacrifice there for all the family." 

It would appear from this that there existed in the 
family of Jesse a time-honored custom of observing a 
yearly festival, when all the children met in their father's 
house. Though mention is not made of the fact, we are 
led to infer that at this time Jesse, the father, was dead ; 
for it is recorded of him, in a previous chapter, that he 
went among men for an old man in the days of Saul ; 
and subsequently, when Saul saw that David's place was 
empty, and passionately demanded the reason of his ab- 
sence, Jonathan answered, " David earnestly asked leave 
of me to go to Bethlehem, and he said — Let me go, I 
pray thee, for our family hath a sacrifice in the city, and 
my brother (he saith not his father), he hath commanded 
me to be there ; and now, if I have found favor in thine 
eyes, let me get away, I pray thee, and see my brother." 

o* 



58 



Thanksgiving. 



Though their father and mother were in the grave, yet so 
long-established was this usage of an annual gathering, 
that the scattered children were summoned by the eldest 
son to meet at the accustomed time, in the old cottage in 
which they were born, to celebrate their domestic festival. 

Among the many associations connected with the day 
of Thanksgiving, none are more vivid or delightful than 
those which are attached to it as a season for gathering 
together family connections, and drawing closer again the 
many hearts which the separate interests of life are con- 
tinually tending to divide. Such occasions exert a most 
beneficial effect upon the character, and are indeed abso- 
lutely necessary to counteract the chilling influences of a 
frosty world. It is a beautiful coincidence, which, by in- 
sensible affinities, from remote generations, has led those 
with whom this day has been most generally observed, to 
make the season of joyful Thanksgiving to the common 
Father of us all the occasion of uniting friends and kin- 
dred, quickening every fond association, and khidling 
every affectionate sympathy. 

So it has occurred that the very* season of the year 
which has invariably been consecrated to this observance, 
has its appropriate influences to deepen the flow of do- 
mestic delights. When the earth is decked in its em- 
broidered robes of green and gold — when the trees are 
decorated with blossoms or richer fruits — when the birds 
are blithesome, and the air is all balmy and serene — then 
are we attracted abroad. But when the birds have fled to 
a warmer clime, and the frost has locked up the streams, 
and the trees are bare of their foliage, and the harvests 
are garnered, and the fields are shrouded with the snows 



Home. 



59 



of winter — then the affections come home for food and 
shelter, and from the nakedness and cold of the world 
without, we seek a covert at our own altars, and find our 
delights in the warm sympathies of domestic life. 

" O Winter ! ruler of the inverted year, 
I love thee, all unlovely as thou seem'st, 
And dreaded as thou art. 
I crown thee king of intimate delights, 
Fireside enjoyments, home-born happiness, 
And all other comforts that the lowly roof 
Of undisturbed retirement ever knew." 

In quiet times we drop upon a quiet theme — home 
and its many blessings — as the occasion of devout thanks- 
givings to Almighty God. But what shall I say ? When 
our hearts are full of joy and good- will at the remem- 
brance of home ; when we reflect upon the nature of our 
enjoyments abroad, and cast them up and find them so 
few, and then turn home again, and see that its pleasures 
are countless, it may be thought that we could speak and 
write of them without ceasing. But it is not so. " Though 
the feeling of home never wearies, because kind offices, 
and the thousand little ways in which home attachments 
are always uttering themselves keep it fresh and full in 
its course ; yet the feeling itself, and that which feeds it, 
have a simplicity and unity of character of which little is 
to be told, though they are always with us." * Like the 
light and air of Heaven are these domestic influences : 
so accustomed are we to their daily presence, that we 
pause not to pronounce upon their vital necessity. 



* Richard H. Dana. 



6o 



Thanksgiving. 



" Truly, the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for 
the eyes to behold the sun " — but so constant and invari- 
able are those cheering influences of day, that the most 
of men would first be reminded of their value by the 
consternation which would follow their total withdrawal. 
Born amid the affections of a Christian home, nurtured 
under its gentle dews and blessings, we go out and come 
in, lie down and rise up, but seldom recounting in dis- 
tinct reflection our unspeakable obligations for such a 
grateful retreat. We say a Christian home ; for it is 
Christianity alone which enriches home, with its virtues 
and endearments. Home is something more than a house 
in which to live, a place in which to be lodged and shel- 
tered and fed ; it is the sanctuary and seminary of the 
affections ; and nowhere on earth can you find a place 
which deserves the name, or the praise we give it, save 
where the religion of Christ, by its direct or indirect in- 
fluence, has nurtured into life those affections which give 
to home all its substantial value. The heathen are " with- 
out natural affection," and surely it is no small occasion 
for thanksgiving to God, that the lot of life has fallen to 
us in a place wherein those kindly instincts and feelings 
of our nature, to which Paganism does rude violence, are 
protected, fostered, and strengthened by the gentle spirit 
of a pure religion. 

There is a great variety in our household affections. 
Each has its separate beauty, all harmonizing in simple 
unity, as the primary colors, each distinct, blend to- 
gether to form the brilliant light of heaven. We must ap- 
ply the prism to the heart, and discover of what curious 
sympathies it is compounded. 



Home. 



61 



The love of a father for a child — what singular com- 
binations enter into its composition ! Analyze, if you can, 
his great emotions, when, for the first time, he feels his 
first-born's breath. Gladness he had felt before ; but 
new joys play through his soul like a sparkling sea, and 
" the concealed treasures of the deep " are not so great as 
the comforts that unfold themselves in this new affection. 
Scarcely is the first emotion of gratitude expressed, when 
sadness gives a tinge to his love, for he is full of awe, 
beholding how he stands related to an immortal spirit. 
Reverence is not a quality of filial love only ; it belongs 
also to the descending affection of a parent for a child, 
who, strong man that he is, trembles at the thought 
that the shadow of his own earthly self must pass over 
the pure mirror of that unclouded mind. Pity, too, is an 
ingredient in the novel compound, for there is an uneasy 
sense that the being so weak and dependent will be ex- 
posed to a thousand ills from which it can be protected 
by no human arm. Pride, too — shall I call it ? yes, if we 
can conceive of a permitted feeling under this name 
which has no alliance with the meanness of sin. Name it 
rather the high pleasure which a parent feels, either in 
anticipating or beholding the success or goodness of a 
son, on whom concentrate all his hopes — the reduplica- 
tion of himself, for whom and in whom he lives ; all this 
enters as another element into that strong love which im- 
parts an impulse and a glow to his whole life. " Call 
not that man wretched," says Mr. Coleridge, " who, what- 
ever he suffers as to pain inflicted, pleasures denied, has 
a child for whom he hopes, and on whom he dotes. 
Poverty may grind him to the dust, obscurity may cast 



62 



Thanksgiving. 



its darkest mantle over him, the song of the gay may be 
far from his own dwelling, his face may be unknown to his 
neighbors, and his voice may be unheard by those among 
whom he dwells — even pain may rack his joints, and 
sleep may flee from his pillow ; but he has a gem with 
which he would not part for wealth defying computation, 
for fame filling a world's ear, for the luxury of the highest 
health, or the sweetest sleep that ever sat upon a mortal's 
eye." 

In the love of a father for his children there is some 
measure of reserve, as if the full expression of it all 
were allied to weakness. There is, withal, too much 
of the world about it. It is subject to great ebbings, 
impatient and indignant at the misconduct of its objects. 
But the love of a mother for her offspring knows no 
such exceptions. First of all, she gives her own life 
in proffered exchange for the life of her child — going 
within the precincts of death to purchase the priceless 
treasure, and ever after holding her own life as nothing 
in comparison with the welfare of her offspring. The 
full and vehement expression of her love, instead of 
being counted in her a weakness, is her very life and 
glory. Blind to every defect of the person, to her eye 
there is a beauty in her own child which works like a 
spell, and, fully apprised of each defect of the character, 
there is a fulness of affection which survives it all. That 
child may be wayward and incorrigible ; he may practise 
every crime, so that the world may justly count him a 
pest and a nuisance, and by all this he may even break 
the heart of her who bare him • but, oh ! he cannot, even 
then, destroy the love which that fond heart contained. 



Home. 



63 



The perfume of partial affection will forever linger among 
the scattered pieces of the shattered vessel. What the 
world casts out as worthless, she will pity and love to 
the last — forgiving when the world only censures, and 
when the grave hides from her sight the miserable victim 
of vice, she shall sigh and weep, refusing to be comforted 
because he is not. " Can a woman forget her child, that 
she should not have compassion on the son of her womb ? " 
Oh, what were this world to us, in the absence of her 
love, who has been more than all the world to us — so 
gentle, so hopeful, so constant, so changeless ! 

Then the love of children for their parents has its 
own separate qualities. As parents are not dependent 
upon their infant children, but children upon their pa- 
rents, the economy of nature makes it necessary that the 
love which descends to the helpless should be stronger 
than the love which ascends to the helper. Filial affec- 
tion, beyond the simple impulses of instinct, is of slow 
growth. There are many weeds of waywardness, and 
heedlessness, and wilfulness, which hide its early beauty, 
and it does not attain its full development till later 
years. It is an affection which increases the older we 
grow. Never can we appreciate our parents' love for us 
till we become parents ourselves; and one of the first 
impulses which we feel on arriving at this relation is to 
hasten home, if our parents still survive, to make some 
new expression of our gratitude and love for them ; and 
the longer we live the more the feeling grows upon us, as 
if we wished to atone for our youthful impatience by a 
more just and grateful conduct. But even in childhood, 
what a simple grace do we see in filial love — the com- 



64 



Thanksgiving. 



pound of gratitude, reverence, and trust. The confidence 
of others may be won by slow degrees, but an affectionate 
child knows that its own parents are to be trusted with 
all the heart. They, as it were, put in the place of God, 
are the first objects of love, the first of faith. The first 
deep thought sealed on the infant's mind, when most sus- 
ceptible and all untouched by other impressions, is the 
idea of parental care ; the image of two faces, beaming 
with benignity, grows into the very texture of the soul ; 
and when other and more superficial impressions fade 
away, and the outward accretions about the heart fall off, 
the first deep picture becomes more distinct, so that we 
incline to think and speak the more of our parents' vir- 
tues, twining the image of those revered forms with gar- 
lands of graces and beauties and excellences, rehearsing 
them to our children and children's children as our high- 
est boast and glory. 

The relation between brothers and sisters has also 
its own distinct characteristics. Independent existences, 
yet similarly related to the same stock; nourished at 
the same fountain of life, sleeping on the same pillow, 
fed at the same table — their sympathies and affections 
become all intertwined and inseparable, like the branches 
of the vine on the side of their dwelling. One pecu- 
liarity is there in this relation — that it never can be 
thought of without calling to mind the common home 
and parentage in which it originated ; and this becomes 
the guarantee of its continued warmth and vigor. But 
for this common centre, it would inevitably happen that, 
as the independent relations of each multiplied and ex- 
tended, the several branches in course of time would be 



Home. 



pushed off into entire estrangement. As there is a qual- 
ity of manliness in the love of a brother, so there is a 
gentle beauty in the affection of a sister. Cast in a finer 
mould, endowed with a nicer sense of the proper and the 
delicate, her influence begins, over her associates of the 
rougher sex, even in the nursery. Entering into a com- 
plete companionship of feeling, she speaks with such a 
soothing voice, and moves about with such a quiet grace, 
that she insensibly assimilates to herself the future man, 
who is now her constant associate ; and blessed is he 
who has been favored by such gentle sympathies. Pity a 
man who has no sister. 

So much has been written in sonnets and romances 
of the love between husband and wife, that many are 
tempted to think that the affection exists only as a poet- 
ical fiction or fancy. It is indeed a mystery, that two 
beings, born and bred at remote points, in entire igno- 
rance of each other's existence, should, in after-years, be 
brought into such a close companionship, and should 
attain to such absolute confidence, such an identity of 
interests, so completely harmonizing into one life, as to 
be the symbol which the Son of God has chosen to sha- 
dow forth his own love for his espoused Church. Infi- 
delity may scoff at the tie, and vice stand abashed be- 
fore its sanctity; but every heart that is right and true 
will be thankful to God for that relic of Paradise, which, 
surviving the general wreck and ruin of the apostasy, has 
secured to us the sacred companionship which, softening 
the asperities of life, helps our better purposes by means 
of our domestic pleasures. 

There is a special beauty in the relation between 



66 



Thanksgiving. 



grandparents and their descendants. The young of ani- 
mals, so soon as they cease to be dependent on their 
dam, forgetful of all affection, mix and mingle with the 
common herd. But the love of a human parent for his 
offspring, instead of fading away, travels down and spreads 
out with a peculiar tenderness on children's children. 
Those far advanced in years would not fear, as they 
often do, that they have survived their usefulness, if 
they reflected how much of good they accomplish by 
being the object of respect, reverence, and love, to the 
young. The thrifty vine is never so beautiful as when it 
twines itself around the old oak, as if it would bind up 
its shattered branches and tenderly conceal the ravages 
of time. 

These are the affections which combine to form the 
glowing lights of home. And shall we not be thankful 
to God for these transcendent delights of domestic life ; 
for the happiness of parents and children, husbands and 
wives, brethren and sisters ? This is a source of pleasure 
which depends not at all on adventitious distinctions. It 
belongs to the humble poor, as well as to the more ele- 
vated in fortune, in equal, and oftentimes in larger, mea- 
sure. Adversity has no power to extinguish these home- 
bred comforts ; for its roughest blasts, while they put 
out all the lesser lights which flicker around us, serve 
always to blow the larger affections to a brighter flame. 
This serene satisfaction cheers the cottages of the poor — 
lightening the weary burden of toilsome life, while it or- 
naments the mansions of the rich above all the costly 
fabrics of art. In many an unpretending abode of rural 
contentment, sheltered among the hills, may you find the 



Home. 



67 



reality of the peaceful picture which Inspiration has 
sketched for our admiration — " whose sons are as plants 
grown up in their youth ; whose daughters are as corner- 
stones, polished after the similitude of a palace ; whose 
garners are full, affording all manner of store, where there 
is no breaking in, nor going out; within whose walls 
there is no complaining " — and from our hearts do we 
join in the exclamation, "Happy, yea, happy is that peo- 
ple that is in such a case." 

To the beneficent influence of Christianity are we 
indebted, not only for the refinement and enlivenment of 
our domestic affections, but also for the security of the 
abode in which they grow. Home is neither an open 
bower nor a barricaded castle, yet it is our own vine and 
fig-tree, beneath which we repose, with none to molest us 
or make us afraid. Here is nurtured that sense of inde- 
pendence in the individual man, which, but for this safe 
retreat, would be trampled down by the huge herds of a 
crowded w r orld. Each native peculiarity of character has 
here its space and quiet in which to grow. There is a 
sense of security which we feel when young, within the 
enclosure of home, which never comes back again to us 
in its full force. All this is needful to the development 
of a healthful mind and body. The tender child is spared 
the shock of care and apprehension. Its parents, invest- 
ed to his eye with the perfections of divinity, seem to 
have the power of protecting him from harm. To such, 
death itself presents but little dread, for they feel as if 
their parents could shield them even from this ; and so, 
sheltered from anxiety and danger, in that secure retreat 
in which God hath planted them, they quietly grow up 



68 



Thanksgiving. 



into life. Though the illusions of childhood pass away, 
yet there is much of this very feeling which we retain 
with us to the last. We go forth to toil and come home 
for rest; we could not survive the steady pressure of 
burdensome cares always, nor safely give up ourselves to 
the agitating passions of life ; so there has been provided 
for us a still and retired abode, in which we may throw 
off the weight, and by the play of gentler affections renew 
our jaded strength. However the world may go with us, 
here is one pleasure always in reserve. Whatever mis- 
fortunes may befall us elsewhere, here are those who 
share them with us. Here the aching head is soothed, 
the broken heart bound up, and here it is, when life wanes, 
that we retire to die. The heathen parent is buried alive 
by his own children, to rid themselves of the care of de- 
crepit age, and the mother, unblessed by the Gospel, casts 
her infant child to the flood or the jackals. But God has 
given us a home, not only to live in, but where we may 
die. Here, surrounded by weeping children, the beloved 
parent breathes his last ; and here the child is attended 
by all the care and love which was the first influence it 
felt when born, and the very latest also when it dies, 
hovering with noiseless steps around the bed of uncon- 
scious suffering. " May you die among your kindred," 
is the common form of Oriental salutation. 

The thought has been variously expressed, as not the 
least among the high praises of a Christian home, that it 
is the place for forming a good character. It is true in 
more senses than one. We call ourselves the instructors 
of our children ; with less pretensions, they are our in- 
structors also. The nursery is the best school for men as 



Home. 



69 



well as for infants. Its playful inmates more than repay 
their teachers, by many an unconscious lesson. Jesus 
Christ took a little child, and placed him in the midst of 
his disciples, and said unto them, " Except ye become as 
little children, ye cannot see the kingdom of God." Would 
you learn simplicity of character — that great virtue — look 
in the " open face " of your child, and study the les- 
son. From the same sunny look, read the beauty of un- 
affected humility. Steal softly up to the corner where 
that busy child is employed in mock labor, erecting, out 
of his blocks or corn-cobs, a church, or barn, or school- 
house, and listen to his sage talk, investing with life 
whatever he touches ; then mark the crimson which man- 
tles his cheek on finding himself detected, and the con- 
fusion with which each fairy thought will hasten to its 
cover on being observed, and learn there that fine lesson 
of delicate and modest reserve, which you can learn no- 
where else half so well. Go in the stillness of night into 
the chamber where your infant children lie in softest slum- 
ber, and there call to mind the innumerable forms of evil 
which beset them ; the sickness from which no care of 
yours can protect them ; the temptations from which no 
vigilance of yours can shield them ; then listen to the 
voice which comes from your own heart, as well as from 
heaven, " Commit thyself and thine helpless offspring 
unto the Watchman who never sleeps;" and then kneel 
down in thanks to God, for the bestowal of a gift and 
a charge, which have involuntarily taught you how to 
pray. 

"A family of children, walking amidst a thousand 
dangers and often escaping, is one of the most striking 



7° 



Thanksgiving. 



proofs of a particular Providence that ever met my mind. 
To talk about the general laws of nature, immutable and 
unbendable to the interposing will of Deity — away with 
such metaphysical trash ! It is just fit for old bachelors 
to write. It is very unfortunate that some of the great 
geniuses who have undertaken to enlighten the world 
by their infidelity were not married men. It would have 
done more to help them to digest the venom of their 
spleen than all the long volumes of rejoinders which have 
been written by metaphysical theologians. It is generally 
to be noticed that infidelity and misanthropy have an 
affinity for each other, and are often combined in the same 
heart. But how is a man to avoid misanthropy ? No 
man ever became a misanthrope under the smiles of an 
affectionate wife, and surrounded by a family of ruddy 
children. These are tender chains which connect us 
with the universe ; they bind us in harmony with our 
species ; they lead us to feel our need of a higher protect- 
or — to see the glory and the goodness, and therefore to 
believe in the existence, of God. God, when he built the 
world, designed to pack men together in families ; and 
it is the only way in which you can throw the human spe- 
cies together, without impairing their principles and en- 
dangering their virtue. A man goes into a splendid city ; 
he becomes too licentious, or too lazy, or too proud, to 
establish a family. He passes his time among the rubi- 
cund inmates of a fashionable boarding-house. He spends 
his evenings at the theatre or billiard-table. He rails at 
women, and hates children, because he only knows the 
vilest of the sex, and has never seen a child which was 
his own. His affections become warped, his heart is in- 



Home. 



71 



sulated ; and because he has lost his humanity, he has 
never found his religion." * 

A year rolls round, and it is fit that a family should 
meet together and recount their manifold blessings. 
Changes not a few may occur in a twelvemonth. Grate- 
ful acknowledgments should be made for God's protec- 
tion and God's bounty. Are parents yet spared to bless 
you ? they in the sear and yellow leaf of age, and you 
in your maturity ? Count it a special favor that they are 
continued to you, at that period of your life when you are 
both able and disposed to appreciate the blessing. Now 
the pleasure is yours of honoring the hoary head, and 
ministering to those who lived only to minister to you. 
Remember that, however high and honored you may be 
before the world as men and women, to your parents you 
are nothing but children still ; and bring to your yearly 
festival a heart thankful to them and to God. Have your 
children been spared to you for another year ? It is won- 
derful, when you consider how thick about them are the 
dangers which threaten their life. Fail not to be thank- 
ful to Him who keeps the sparrow's children and yours. 

It was a beautiful custom among the ancients to throw 
the gall of the nuptial sacrifices far behind the altar, as a 
sign and pledge that every bitterness should be excluded 
from the relation which was then consummated. Ap- 
proaching the household altars, with an oblation of united 
thanks for personal and family blessings, let every bitter 
thought be banished from the sweet and sunny charities 
of the domestic sacrifice ; and let every occasion — alas ! 
but too few and infrequent are they — be improved to ce- 

* Withington. 



7 2 



Thanksgiving. 



ment the relations we sustain to one another by means of 
a warm and special gratitude to our Father in heaven. 

So it may be that the day, which to most is one of 
peculiar pleasure, to some is one of irresistible sadness ; 
and the very words here written, instead of cheering, have 
only pierced their hearts with many a poignant pang. 
They remind them of happy scenes which have gone, 
never to be renewed. The old homestead, whither they 
were wont to go, has passed into the hands of strangers, 
and its former inmates are now in that narrow house 
where there are no greetings — and no welcomings. " The 
delights of which you have spoken," say these, "once 
were ours ; but ours they are no longer." Recall the 
word. Scenes like these never fade — pleasure of this 
description can never die. What you have already felt 
and enjoyed can never be taken from you. It is yours 
still, and will be yours forever. You have an invisible 
property in these remembered delights which death itself 
cannot steal from you. The forms of your beloved parents 
may have mouldered back to dust ; but their memory and 
their love can never decay. You cannot rid yourself of 
their influence ; no wave of oblivion can wash out the fond 
recollection of all they were, and all they did. You are 
rich in these priceless memories and affections. You 
have treasures garnered up in the past which gold could 
not buy. The spiritual can never perish. It was the vir- 
tue, the affection of those remembered but now departed 
relatives alone which you loved ; but death never can 
touch these immortal qualities of their life. Desolate, in- 
deed, would your heart be, if despoiled of all these cher- 
ished recollections. The mould may be broken up and 



Home. 



73 



thrown away, but the spiritual fabric which was cast therein 
never can be marred nor stolen ; and the product of those 
scenes and relations whose loss you so bitterly regret, lives 
in these grateful memories and kindly affections, which 
neither time nor bereavement can ever touch ; and which, 
even now, 'are exerting their influence to make you better 
and happier. Count yourself, then, no more solitary ; for 
the dead still live — their voices, their smiles, their ex- 
amples, their virtues, are still yours beyond the reach of 
vicissitude : and with them you will hold close sympathy 
until your own hearts crumble to dust. 

Perhaps the shadow of a more recent bereavement is 
on you. Some seat at your table is vacant ; some bright 
and darling head, on which you were wont to put your 
hand with a blessing, is pillowed beneath the winter's 
snow. Surely, you will be thankful that religion has 
taught us how many mercies are mingled with our be- 
reavements. When night comes, the different members 
of a family go to their separate apartments for sleep ; the 
morning soon unites them — and waking or sleeping they 
are one household still. So is your family separated for 
a season — a part are here, and a part are in the chambers 
of the tomb ; but the bond is not broken ; and soon the 
morning will come, when you shall meet again, face to 
face. The most important thing of all would have been 
omitted, had I failed to say that the best and greatest 
blessing which religion has conferred on a Christian home, 
is, in making the affections immortal. If we were all 
thrown together fortuitously, the companions of a brief 
moment, our true wisdom would be in moderating or even 
destroying those affections which would expose us to sor- 
4 



74 



Thanksgiving. 



row from the violence of their rupture. Far different is it 
when Christianity assures us that, beyond the narrow pass 
of death, our present fellowships are to be perpetuated 
in endless harmony. We meet around the home-hearth 
at the yearly sacrifice — and then plunge anew into life's 
dangers and cares ; but hereafter we shall meet in our 
Father's house in Heaven, with welcomings and rejoicings 
that never shall cease. Who of us will not be thankful 
with such a prospect gilding his skies, and such a promise 
shining on his path ? 

We cannot close our chapter with any thing more 
fitting than the lines of Charles Sprague, on 

THE FAMILY MEETING. 

We are all here ! 

Father, mother, 

Sister, brother, 
All who hold each other dear. 
Each chair is filled, we're all at home. 
To-night, let no cold stranger come. 
It is not often thus around 
Our old familiar hearth we're found. 
Bless then the meeting and the spot — 
For once be every care forgot ; 
Let gentle peace assert her power, 
And kind affection rule the hour ; 
We're all, all here. 

We're not all here ! 
Some are away — the dead ones dear, 
Who thronged with us this ancient hearth, 
And gave the hour of guiltless mirth. 
Death, with a stern, relentless hand, 
Looked in, and thinned our little band. 



Home. 

Some like a night-flash passed away — 
And some sank, lingering, day by day. 
The quiet grave-yard — some lie there, 
And cruel ocean has his share. 
We're not all here ! 

We are all here ! 
Even they — the dead — though dead, so dear. 
Fond memory, to her duty true, 
Brings back their faded forms to view. 
How life-like through the mist of years 
Each well-remembered face appears ! 
We see them as in times long past ; 
From each to each kind looks are cast ; 
We hear their words, their smiles behold — 
They're round us as they were of old. 
We are all here. 

We are all here ! 

Father, mother, 

Sister, brother, 
You that I love with love so dear. 
This may not long of us be said, 
Soon must we join the gathered dead, 
And by the hearth we now sit round 
Some other circle will be found. 
O then, that wisdom may we know, 
That yields a life of peace below : 
So, in the world to follow this, 
May each repeat, in words of bliss, 

We're all, all here. 



A CHEERFUL TEMPER. 



He that is of a merry heart hath a continual feast. 

Prov. 15:15. 

A merry heart doeth good like a medicine. 

Prov. 17 .-22. 



IV. 



A CHEERFUL TEMPER. 

The greatest boon of Providence is a disposition to 
enjoy all things. Mr. Addison closes one of his essays 
in the Spectator with these lines, adopted now into our 
Sabbath hymns, and familiar to all who read the English 
tongue : 

" Ten thousand thousand precious gifts 
My daily thanks employ ; 
Nor is the least a cheerful heart, 
That tastes those gifts with joy." 

Not the least ! It is the whole. It is the mind itself 
which colors all outward conditions ; and affluence of gifts 
would leave one in misery if there were no interior dis- 
position to cheerfulness. " He that is of a merry heart 
hath a continual feast." Some nicety of discrimination 
is necessary, if we could hit the exact meaning of the ex- 
pression. Changes have occurred in the significancy of 
words since our English version was made, which might 
mislead the unthinking. Merriment most readily sug- 
gests the idea of conviviality and jollity. A " Merry 
Andrew " excites boisterous laughter. We naturally as- 



8o 



Thanksgiving. 



sociate with merriment the absence of the higher qualities, 
and, except in the case of children, with whom animal 
spirits are an exuberant fountain of gaiety, we more gen- 
erally connect it with artificial stimulants — the sparkling 
cup and the shout of high-sounding festivity. Instead 
of commending hilarity like this as a medicine, we have 
an impression that the Scriptures compare it to some- 
thing else, which begins with an M — madness. Milton's 
IS Allegro was written when he was in the flush and buoy- 
ancy of youth, before the dark shadows of serious ills 
had passed over his eye and heart. It will always be 
admired as a proof of the sweet rhythm of the English 
tongue, while many of the images it embalms, of the 
morning lark, the cheery crowing of the cock, the plough- 
man whistling in the furrow, the mower whetting his 
scythe, the sweet-scented haycock, always give a sense 
of refreshment to a jaded spirit. But the nymph which 
he invokes, with 

Jest and youthful jollity, 
Quips and cranks and wanton wiles, 
Nods and becks and wreathed smiles, 
Such as hang on Hebe's cheek, 
And love to live in dimple sleek ; 
Sport that wrinkled care derides, 
And laughter holding both her sides, 

was a Pagan goddess of mythological pedigree. There 
is a species of mirth which the highest authority has 
likened to the crackling of thorns under a pot — a light, 
flashing blaze, which produces a bubbling and boiling of 
waters, soon to subside into insipidity. 



A Cheerful Temper. 81 



Collating the several passages in the Old and New 
Testaments, in which the word translated " merry " is used, 
we find no difficulty in ascertaining the precise intention 
of the word. " Is any among you merry ? let him sing 
psalms," says the Apostle James. The word used is the 
very same which Paul employed when addressing the 
ship's company in danger of wreck — "Be of good cheer ; " 
— circumstances suggesting the pertinency of bravery and 
hope, but forbidding any approach to hilarity. The Hebrew 
word used by Solomon is translated in the Septuagint by 
a synonym which is used elsewhere in the New Testa- 
ment (i Thess. iv. n)to express quiet content ; the same 
which Plutarch frequently employs in his essay on Mental 
Tranquillity. So that we are fortified by usage, scriptu- 
ral and classical, in adopting this as the exact shade of 
thought — " A cheerful heart doeth good, like a medicine." 
The etymology of the word evSv^eo), be of good cheer, 
conveys a lesson — well-minded, well-disposed — for cheer- 
fulness always has in it an element of goodness, while 
merriment may co-exist with folly and crime. When Mil- 
ton describes the fallen angels, after the Stygian Council 
was dissolved, dispersing in various directions, some in- 
dulging in feats of strength and speed, with uproarious 
mirth ; and when Death himself is represented by the 
same author as " grinning horribly a ghastly smile," it 
does not shock the taste ; but had he described either as 
cheerful, radiant with smiling tranquillity, we should have 
felt the incongruity, for he is describing the dark forms of 
guilt and woe. 

Let us mention a few more distinctions separating 
cheerfulness from other things with which it is often con- 
4* 



82 



Thanksgiving. 



founded. It is not the same as wit ; though a cheerful 
temper may show its play through wit, if this intellectual 
quality exist. " Foolish jesting " is condemned alike by 
good manners, taste, and Scripture. The quick associa- 
tions of wit are of the intellect and not of the heart, and 
too frequently have they been associated with cruelty of 
disposition. Endeavoring to be witty is always weak and 
pitiable. That was sage advice which Dean Swift gave to 
a young clergyman: " I cannot forbear warning you," says 
he, " in the most earnest manner, against endeavoring at 
wit in your sermons, because, by the strictest computation, 
it is very near a million to one that you have none, and 
because too many of your profession have made them- 
selves everlastingly ridiculous by attempting it." To which 
may be added, if the pulpit is ever the place for wit, never is 
it the place for levity. Though this intellectual gladiator- 
ship of wit is often employed in the service of cruel satire 
and stinging sarcasm, yet it may be associated with more 
genial and kindly qualities. Should I say that there 
were a few cases in which the Apostle Paul has used the 
rapier-thrust of wit, I should not be understood by those 
who do not comprehend, through a translation, the sharp 
point of certain Greek words. The principle advocated 
by Shaftesbury, that " ridicule is a test of truth," cannot 
be conceded ; but if ever there was a book mighty in its wit, 
it is Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. The names of the streets 
in Vanity Fair ; of the judges, jury, and counsel in the 
trial of Faithful, excite a smile at the witty adroitness ; 
but it is a wit like the smooth beauty of the lightning, 
which demolishes what it hits. 

So, again, cheerfulness is distinct from the sense of 



A Cheerful Temper. 



83 



the humorous, however acute it may be. Humor is a sign 
of sensibility, of pathos, a deep, rich fount of feeling, even 
though it be sad ; the very word signifies moisture, and, 
like April -weather, smiles and tears are mingled together 
in its composition. The most grotesque images may be 
suggested and enjoyed by a sense of the humorous, when 
bodily and mental disease will not allow cheerfulness ; of 
which Cowper was a remarkable instance. The amusing 
description of John Gilpin, which the most sedate cannot 
read without laughing, was written, it is said, during one 
of the longest and gloomiest of those seasons of melan- 
choly to which his sad life was subject — a streak of 
crimson and gold on the edge of the thunder-cloud. In- 
stances are well authenticated, in which actors on the 
stage, with the keenest perception of the humorous, by 
which they have convulsed houses in obstreperous mirth, 
have consulted physicians and clergymen for relief from 
a settled melancholy which was wasting their life. 

Cheerfulness is not intellectual ability ; it is not mere 
animal spirit ; it is not the excitement of artificial stimu- 
lants ; very distinct is it from jocularity and uproarious 
laughter. It is the tranquil, hopeful, benign, blessed 
mood, which is rightly described as well-minded ness. It 
is not a talent, but a disposition. Making all allowance 
for diversities of constitution, it is a temper which is to 
be carefully and wisely cultivated. 

The things affirmed of this cheerful heart, thus de- 
fined, are, that he who has it, has a continual feast, and 
that it doeth good like a medicine. He who has a feast 
only on the last Thursday in November has a sad life. 
There is a daily festivity, which depends not on the 



8 4 



Thanksgiving. 



quality of the fare with which the table is spread, whether 
it be a dinner of herbs or stalled ox, but always on those 
genial qualities of the heart which incline us, as we say, 
to look on the bright side, and to make the best of every- 
thing. Strange that this disposition is not universal. But 
we come in contact with a most singular fact, which at 
first is not so easy of analysis, that people are intent on 
playing the miserable, as if there were a virtue in it. The 
real solution is, that it is an exhibition of selfishness ; for 
no one is habitually cheerful who does not think more of 
others than of himself. Multitudes appear to be studious 
of something which makes them unhappy ; for unhappi- 
ness excites attention, and attention is supposed to in- 
spire interest, and interest compassion. You have seen 
a person of very robust and corpulent habit, so robust as 
ought to excite perpetual gratitude for joyous health, 
sometimes putting on the airs of an invalid, for no reason 
in the world but to draw out toward him some expression 
of affectionate concern, and so gratify his self-conceit. 
That very mood which in children is called naughtiness, 
in young people is dignified with the name of " low spir- 
its," for which they are to be petted and pitied ; while 
in elderly people it is known as " nervousness," for which 
it is expected they should be humored to the full tension 
of mortal patience. 

The first place for the festal and medicinal play of 
cheerfulness is home. The parent who does not prac- 
tise it, loosens the strongest bond which draws children 
to virtue. Once make the impression that goodness is 
austere, and it has lost its charms for those who reach 
conclusions, not through reasoning, but the feelings. 



A Cheerful Temper. 85 



Perhaps you can recall persons with whom you have 
been thrown into contact when you were young, who, in 
your present judgment, were good, very good, but in 
every way repulsive. You never associated them with 
sunshine. You felt that goodness had a strange ten- 
dency to make one unhappy. Some of the best men the 
world has seen have lived to regret just this thing — the 
want of habitual cheerfulness in the presence of their 
children. It may be taken as a postulate of the social 
system, that home should always be the most cheerful 
and attractive -place on earth ; and whatever is expended 
to make it such, is expended wisely and economically. 
No man is qualified for the first offices of an educator, 
at home or elsewhere, who is not habitually cheerful. 
Reverence is an essential quality of character, but it is a 
mistake to exact it by gruff austerity. Nothing can be 
more grotesque, for example, than the enactments for 
respect which prevailed in some of our American col- 
leges during the last century, when the wearing of a hat 
in the college-yard by a Freshman was interdicted by stat- 
ute ) and the exact measure in rods was specified at 
which obeisance was to be made to that specimen of the 
multum in parvo — a college-officer. Respect, reverence, 
are not to be compelled by big wigs and elongated faces 
and assumed dignities ; they must be given to cheerful 
worth, as flowers open themselves to the sun. Grave 
mistakes were made in his home by that great metaphysi- 
cian — of whom any family or any country might be proud 
— Jonathan Edwards. His biographer informs us that his 
children were not expected to keep their seats in his pres- 
ence ; that he ate from a silver bowl, as one set apart 



86 



Thanksgiving. 



for special reverence, and that his features seldom relaxed 
from the one expression of grave austerity. There is 
one, and, so far as I know, only one, passage in all his 
voluminous writings in which he dropped into a mirthful 
vein of argument in refuting an opponent. He is arguing 
that the doctrine of the Arminians concerning the will is 
an absurdity, and he writes as follows : " If some learned 
philosopher who had been abroad, in giving an account 
of the -various observations he had made in his travels, 
should say he had been in Terra del Fuego, and there had 
seen an animal which he calls by a certain name, that 
begat and brought forth itself, and yet had a sire and a 
dam distinct from itself ; that it had an appetite, and was 
hungry before it had a being ; that his master, who led 
and governed him at his pleasure, was always govern- 
ed by him and driven by him wherever he pleased ; that 
when he moved, he always took a step before the first 
step ; that he went with his head first, and yet always 
went tail foremost, and this, though he had neither head 
nor tail, it would be no impudence to tell such a traveller 
that he himself had no idea of such an animal as he gave 
an account of, and never had, nor could have." I have 
often imagined what sort of an expression must have stolen 
across the thin, pale face of Jonathan Edwards when he 
wrote that most grotesque paragraph. It must have been 
somewhat like a sun-gleam in the solemn pine-woods of 
a New England winter. 

If we speak of the mistakes of good and pious men, 
what shall we say by way of commending that sweet 
cheerfulness by which a good and sensible woman dif- 
fuses the oil of gladness in the proper sphere of home. 



A Cheerful Temper, 



87 



The best specimens of heroism in the world were never 
gazetted. They play their role in common life, and 
their reward is not in the admiration of spectators, but 
in the deep joy of their own conscious thoughts. It is 
easy for a housewife to make arrangements for an occa- 
sional feast. But let me tell you what is greater and 
better. Amid the weariness and cares of life ; the 
troubles, real and imaginary, of a family; the many 
thoughts and toils which are requisite to make the family 
the home of thrift, order, and comfort ; the varieties of 
temper and cross-lines of tastes and inclination which are 
to be found in a large household — to maintain a heart 
full of good-nature, and a face always bright with cheer- 
fulness, this is a perpetual festivity. I do not mean a 
mere superficial simper, which has no more character in 
it than the flow of a brook, but that exhaustless patience, 
and self-control, and kindness, and tact, which spring 
from good sense and brave purposes. Neither is it the 
mere reflection of prosperity — for cheerfulness then is no 
virtue. Its best exhibition is in the dark background of 
real adversity. Affairs assume a gloomy aspect — poverty 
is hovering about the door — sickness has already entered 
— days of hardship and nights of watching go slowly by, 
and now you see the triumphs of which I speak. When 
the strong man has bowed himself, and his brow is knit 
and creased, you will see how the whole life of a house- 
hold seems to hang on the frailer form, which, with solici- 
tudes of her own, passing, it may be, under the " sacred 
primal sorrow of her sex," has an eye and an ear for every 
one but herself; suggestive of expedients, hopeful in ex- 
tremities, helpful in kind words and affectionate smiles, 



88 



Thanksgiving. 



morning, noon, and night, the medicine, the light, the 
heart, of a whole household. God bless that bright, sun- 
ny face, says many a heart, as he recalls the features of 
mother, wife, sister, daughter, which has been to him all 
that these words have described. Mr. Dickens has not 
been very fortunate in his portraiture of clergymen. If 
Mr. Chadband must stand as representative of the pro- 
fession, we must say that the author has not been very 
happy in his circle of acquaintances. But as for his por- 
traiture of kind-hearted, cheerful, brave women in humble 
life, he has certainly done the world a service ; for when 
the more stately forms of Shakspeare's imagination and 
the rollicksome or thoughtful heroines of Walter Scott 
are forgotten, lowly homes will be cheered with the picture 
of " Little Dot," diffusing an atmosphere of kindness so 
long as there is a cricket to sing on the hearth. 

The first object of an intelligent physician is to in- 
spire cheerful hope in his patient. This is better than 
drugs. And so the medicinal effect of cheerfulness is 
most apparent in times of peril and calamity. There are 
some who have an eye for nothing but evil, whose office it 
is to croak, till at length the mischief apprehended comes 
to pass. Indifference to danger is no sign of a Christian 
or a patriot. The very love we bear to the Church and 
to our country, renders us sensitive to any thing which 
threatens their peace and prosperity. But we ought 
never to despair of the fortunes of either. The best med- 
icine in the worst times is a cheerful heart. Authentic 
records inform us, that in the seventeenth century our 
Puritan fathers enacted a law, requiring that any person 
who should thereafter be elected to the office of Cover- 



A Cheerful Temper. 89 

nor, and would not serve, should pay a fine of twenty 
pounds sterling. What would the modest shades of 
Winslow and Bradford say to the habits of our times, 
when men scramble for office with an unconcealed am- 
bition for spoils ? Can any one doubt that one of our 
greatest perils is the greed of personal ambition ? In 
Middleton's Life of Cicero, we have an account of the 
mirth which was occasioned at Rome, by the specta- 
cle of a few Britons, dressed in their savage attire, led 
along in the military ovation decreed to their returning 
conqueror. What changes since then in Britain and 
Italy, as to the relations of barbarism and civilization ! 
Wealth and power lead to luxury and enervation. This 
is the one lesson of history ; and the most fatal influence 
which threatens our strength, is that increase of opulence 
which excites admiration, and fosters pride, while it may 
insidiously sap the foundations of our true life. Magnify 
and multiply all these occasions for alarm, as much as 
you will. What then ? Shall we give up the ship ? 
Shall we let every thing go by the board, and sit down in 
blank despair ? Let us rather imitate that noble class of 
men who show the best qualities of our nature, on the deck 
of the ship, when the storm is at its worst, whose bravery, 
when driven from one expedient to another, inspires the 
timid with hope. Excitements do not imperil, provided 
the temper be right. When the temperature of an indi- 
vidual or a community is raised, every thing which belongs 
thereto comes out with the greater force ; and the peril is 
always and only from that which is evil. Let there be 
nothing but what is humane and kind and good in our 
nature, and danger is not to be apprehended, even if we 



9° 



Thanksgiving. 



be excited to a white heat. Reformers who have suc- 
ceeded the best in Church and State, were of a most 
hearty cheerfulness. In Luther it amounted very often to 
jollity. Old Samuel Adams, of Boston, was renowned as 
much for his sonorous singing . of hymns as for his pa- 
triotism. Suppose that affairs should wax worse and 
worse, never will they be mended by impatience, irritabil- 
ity, and petulance. " Fret not thyself," is an inspired 
counsel for troublous times. Have a good heart, and 
do the best you can. Trust in the Lord, and mischief 
will be averted. Reformations which cannot be accom- 
plished by good temper, will not be brought about by ob- 
jurgations and wrath. 

How can a cheerful temper be acquired ? Is not the 
world evil, and are not occasions for uneasy fears innu- 
merable ? Differences in constitutional temperament are 
very obvious. Let all allowance be made for them. We 
speak of what pertains to personal culture, and here we 
claim that cheerfulness must have a religious basis ; and 
the first thing religion teaches is, the immensity of mercy 
which has supervened upon demerit. True, sin has strick- 
en the world, and a curse has followed upon sin. But this 
is not the whole. God has dealt with us incomparably 
above our deserts. As an old writer has expressed it : 
" It was a rare mercy that we were allowed to live at all, 
or that the anger of God did punish us so gently • but 
when the rack is changed for the axe, and the axe for 
imprisonment, and the imprisonment changed into an en- 
largement, and the enlargement into an entertainment, 
and the entertainment passes into an adoption, these are 
steps of a mighty favor and perfect redemption from our 



A Cheerful Temjjer. 91 



sin. And thus it was that God punished us. He threat- 
ened we should die. and so we do, but not so as we deserved ; 
we wait for death, and stand sentenced, and every day is 
a new reprieve, and brings new favors ; and at last, when 
we must die, by the irreversible decree, that death is 
changed into a sleep, and that sleep is in the bosom of 
Christ, and there dwells all peace and security, and this 
passes into glory and felicity. We looked for a Judge, 
and behold a Saviour ! We feared an accuser, and be- 
hold an advocate ! We sat down in sorrow, and rise in 
joy. We leaned upon rhubarb and aloes, and our aprons 
were made of the sharp leaves of the Indian fig-tree. And 
so we fed, and so were clothed. But the rhubarb proved 
medicinal, and the rough leaf of the tree brought its fruit 
wrapped up in its foldings, and round about our dwellings 
was planted a hedge of thorns and bundles of thistles, 
the nightshade, and the poppy ; and at the root of these 
grew the healing plantain, which, rising up into a tallness 
by the friendly invitation of heavenly influence, twined 
about the tree of the cross, and cured the wounds of the 
thorns, and the curse of the thistles, and the maledictions 
of man, and the wrath of God. Si sic irascitur, quo modo 
convivatur ? If God be so kind when he is angry, what 
must he be when he feasts us with caresses of the most 
tender kindness ? # Every thing we receive above the line 
of deserts should foster a spirit of cheerful gratitude. 

Next to this reflection, the specific we would prescribe 
for a cheerful habit is activity in well-doing. Yes, there 
is evil enough in the world, and we must strive to make 



* Jeremy Taylor. 



9 2 



thanksgiving. 



it less. How can we be cheerful in such a suffering 
world? Strive to make it better. Despair sulks, and 
pampered indolence is a prey to ennui; but he who 
works for a good object keeps the enemy at bay, and 
good works leave no place for moodiness. Excepting 
such cases of bodily infirmity as incapacitate for all 
motion, in which patience and submission may enact their 
own cheerfulness — for those flowers are sweetest which 
bloom by night — I cannot conceive of one having a cheer- 
ful temper, who is not accustomed to healthful bodily ex- 
ercise. If there was oddity in the common prescription 
of the late Dr. Abernethy, of London, to his rich patients, 
there was much sound wisdom — "Live on sixpence a 
day, and earn it." Half the melancholy which invades 
the domain of religion, has its origin in laziness. Doubts 
and difficulties in spiritual concerns, and despondencies 
in prayer, quite as often arise from the want of bodily ex- 
ercise as from a discriminating conscience. Never pity 
the man who swings a sledge, or holds the plough, or works 
the ship, or prosecutes a trade. Give your compassion 
to the poor, shriveled form, that has nothing to do. 
Cheerfulness is the first-born child of daily work. 

He who is the busiest, out of regard to duty, is the 
happiest of all men. Matthew Henry says, in his quaint 
style, of Adam required to dress the garden in which he 
was put, " if either a high extraction, or a great estate, or 
a large dominion, or perfect innocency, or a genius for 
pure contemplation, or a small family, could have given 
man a writ of ease, Adam had not been set to work." 
As God is full of blessedness, because he is full of benev- 
olent activity, so we find the true zest and sparkle of life 



A Cheerful Temper. 93 



in the constant exercise of all our faculties, in the way of 
well-doing. 

Come, Brother, turn with me from pining thought, 

And all the inward ills that sin has wrought ; 

Come, send abroad a love for all who live, 

And feel the deep content in turn they give. 

Kind wishes and good deeds — they make not poor ; 

They'll home again, full laden, to thy door. 

The streams of love flow back where they begin ; 

For springs of outward joys lie deep within. 

There is a subject suggested in this connection which 
deserves ampler discussion, and the best consideration 
of the best men : the necessity of some kind of recrea- 
tion, which, being innocent in its nature, and incapable 
of perversion, shall give to body and mind a needed 
stimulus and refreshment. It is, of course, in city life, 
that the problem is of the most difficult solution. No one 
who began life in the country, can forget its simple recre- 
ations, its healthful sports. Who does not feel his spirits 
rise as he recalls the amusements of a northern winter, 
when sun and stars looked down on the smooth and bril- 
liant ice, tempting the skater to his joyous speed, and 
turning the horse from the dirt and flint of the road to the 
crystal path, where, with merry music of bell and laugh, 
he coursed over the surface of water without wetting a hair 
of his fetlock. 

Sidney Smith has shown an uncommon amount of 
sound English sense in this one direction, to all who 
would attain an habitual cheerfulness : "Take short 
views." His meaning would not be comprehended, if 
we did not remember how many are prone to distress 



94 



Thanksgiving. 



themselves by the fear of remote possibilities. " Borrow- 
ing trouble " is the common expression which describes 
the habit. It is not the actual occurrence of to-day 
which grieves and afflicts ; but it is the imagination of 
what is likely to occur in some contingency of the future. 
" Take short views," says our adviser. Look at what you 
have already — this present day, this present hour. What 
is this but a paraphrase of our Lord's own direction — 
" Take no thought for the morrow ; for the morrow shall 
take thought for the things of itself." Travelling on some 
of the railroads of the country — such, for example, as 
that which winds through the Alleghanies, or the Water- 
Gap of the Delaware — looking far in advance, it would 
seem that huge mountains were dropped directly upon 
your road, obstructing all progress, and bringing you to a 
pause. But when you advance to the spot, you find that 
there is a way along which the road may wind, narrow 
and circuitous, perhaps, but smooth, and safe, and level 
as elsewhere, working itself free from all impediments, and 
emerging at length again into the open and extended 
plain-country. Just so is it in the journey of life. We 
anticipate formidable obstructions, and imagine that an 
end has come to all farther advances, by the towering 
mountains which stretch away across the distant horizon. 
Shorter views would make us content with the road which 
is ready for this day's journey ; and past experience 
should satisfy us that there are no hills so high, no valleys 
so precipitous, no passes so rugged, but that a road runs 
through them all, when the time has actually arrived for 
the march. Every man gets through the world without 
coming to a halt. 



A Cheerful Temper. 



95 



Another thing for which Sidney Smith deserves ad- 
miration was, amid all his honorable aspirations, the 
absence of mean jealousies. He had a brother who was 
titled and wealthy, but toward him was nothing exacting 
or envious. He occupied his own sphere, and was very 
brave and contented in managing his own affairs, and the 
very cattle in his inclosures had occasion to be thankful 
for his kindness. Here was regulation of desire within 
proper limits. This also is conducive to cheerfulness. 
The conditions of contentment are put at a very low 
figure in the Scriptures — " having food and raiment." It 
is the intrusion of envy and jealousy which destroys 
cheerfulness. 

The bee sucks honey out of wormwood ; and the wasp 
secretes venom from the juice of the ripest plum which it 
stings. The habit of cheerful gratitude depends on our 
minds, not on the events of our times. Some are so un- 
fortunate in disposition and ways of thinking, that they 
detect nothing but evil even in that which is good ; while 
others make it their rule and their habit to discern good 
even in that which is felt to be evil. Theophrastus, the 
favorite pupil of Aristotle, to whom we are indebted for the 
preservation of his master's writings, has left us a book 
entitled " Characters," or Portraits, in which we find the 
following description of a " Discontented Man." Though 
the portrait was drawn more than two thousand years 
ago, it will serve for the likeness of men now living on 
the earth. " A discontented temper," writes he, " is a 
frame of mind which sets a man upon complaining with- 
out reason. When one of his neighbors, who makes an 
entertainment, sends a servant to him with a plate of 



9 6 



Thanksgiving, 



any thing that is nice — ' What ! ' says he, ' your master 
did not think me good enough to dine with him ? ' In 
a dry season, he grumbles for want of rain ; and when a 
shower falls, mutters to himself, ' Why could not this 
have come sooner ? ' If he happens to find a piece of 
money — ' Had it been a pot of gold,' says he, ' it would 
have been worth stooping for.' He takes a great deal of 
pains to beat down the price of a slave ; and after he has 
paid his money for him, ' I am sure,' he says, ' thou art 
good for nothing, or I should not have got thee so cheap.' 
When a messenger comes with great joy to acquaint him 
with the birth of a son and heir, he replies, 4 That is as 
much as to say, my friend, I am poorer by half to-day 
than I was yesterday.' Though he has gained a cause 
with full costs and damages, he complains that his counsel 
did not insist upon the most material points. If, after 
any misfortune has befallen him, his friends raise a volun- 
tary contribution for him, and desire him to be merry — 
' How is that possible,' says he, 1 when I am to pay every 
one of you the money again, and be obliged to you into 
the bargain ? "' # 

Were I to string together a few brief hints additional 
as to the manner in which this bright virtue may be culti- 
vated, they would be on this wise : As every man has a 
will of his own, you must expect every day that your own 
will be crossed ; when this is done, you must bear it as 
meekly as when you cross the will of another. Expect 
not too much of others, then they will be more tolerant 
of you. Esteem others more highly than yourself, and 



* Addison's Works, vol. iv. p. 336. 



A Cheerful Temper. 97 



watch for the opportunities in which you can say a kind 
word and confer a small pleasure. Be studious to see 
what is good and hopeful to be applauded in another, 
rather than what is evil to be reproved ; and amid all the 
trivial annoyances of life, measure those substantial bless- 
ings which come to you every hour from the open hand 
of Christ; and if the practice of these rules does not cure 
a clouded brow and an irritable manner, then it is be- 
cause you need, and most probably will have, some other 
medicine besides that of a merry heart. 

Chief of all, if you would be cheerful in such a world 
as this, you must exercise a constant trust in an all-wise 
Providence. We mean the recognition of that Divine 
Supremacy which directs the revolutions of time and 
events with a wisdom and love and power superior to our 
own, and an obedient deference to His will. If we will 
consider it honestly, we shall be convinced of the fact, 
that the occasions for individual and national gratitude 
which are owing to our own power and achievement are 
very few, while those are boundless which spring from 
Him who watches alike the sparrow and the empire. 
In the worst times let this be our joyous confidence, 
"The Lord God omnipotent reigneth." " Although the 
fig-tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the 
vines ; the labor of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall 
yield no meat ; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, 
and there shall be no herd in the stalls : yet I will rejoice 
in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation." 

Mirth to the sorrowful might be the occasion of afflic- 
tion and pain, by the intrusion of contrary qualities. But 

5 



9 8 



Thanksgiving. 



as to cheerfulness, what heart knows so much of it as 
that which has been mellowed by affliction ? Not he 
who has been elated by long-continued prosperity knows 
the secret of true serenity, but meek-eyed sorrow speaks 
with a low and gentle voice of the goodness of God ; 
and the best incentives to gratitude are those which 
memory brings up from the shadows of the past. If 
your young child is no longer with you, thank God for its 
better home, and the warm and better love you bear it, 
now that the heavens have received it. 

If there are tears and clouds, there is also a bow. Be 
still ; be cheerful ; be thankful. 



HAPPY MEDIOCRITY. 




Two things have I required of thee ; deny me them not before I 
die ; remove far from me vanity and lies ; give me neither poverty nor 
riches ; feed me with food convenient for me, lest I be full and deny 
thee, and say, who is the Lord ? or lest I be poor and steal, and take 
the name of my God in vain. 




Prov. 30 : 7-9. 



Auream quisquis mediocritatem diligit. 

Hor., Od., 2. 10. 5. 



V. 



HAPPY MEDIOCRITY. 

The Scotch have an old proverb : " That an ounce 
of mother is worth more than a pound of clergy." If it 
be true, according to the best criticism, that Agur and 
Lemuel were brothers, their mother, judging from the 
words she taught them, must have been a person of re- 
markable endowments. Singularly fortunate were Ithiel 
and Ucal in their preceptor. Very little do we know of 
Agur, but he has hit the true philosophy of life better 
than all the sages of classic fame. For aught that ap- 
pears, his sententious wisdom may have often delighted 
listening disciples ; but these few words, " give me neither 
poverty nor riches" assigned a place among inspired 
aphorisms, have reached the good fortune of the one in- 
sect in a swarm, which a drop of amber has embalmed 
imperishably. 

In the estimation of this Idumean teacher, character 
was the object of chief concern ; and outward conditions 
were to be regarded by their tendency to affect this favor- 
ably or unfavorably. Character does not depend upon 
the outward estate ; though we are prone to judge other- 
wise. As that shrewd observer, our great English dram- 



102 



Thanksgiving. 



atist, has said : " We make the sun, moon, and stars 
guilty of our disaster ; as if we were ignorant of neces- 
sity j knaves by compulsion ; and all that we are evil in 
by a divine thrusting on." " Burden not," says old Sir 
Thomas Brown, " the back of Aries, Leo, or Taurus, with 
thy faults ; nor make Saturn, Mars, and Venus, guilty of 
thy follies. Think not to fasten thy imperfections on the 
stars, and so despairingly conceive thyself under a fatality 
of evil. Calculate thyself within, seek not thyself in the 
moon, but in thine own orb." Nevertheless, it must not 
be forgotten that each and every condition in life has its 
own tendencies or influences for good or evil, and if we 
are wise we shall be most thankful for that conjunction 
which is most favorable to virtue and happiness. 

The prayer of Agur deprecates for himself the two 
extremes of great wealth and severe poverty, as being 
both conducive to evils ; while he asks for himself the 
happy medium, which is alike removed from pride and 
sensuality on the one hand, and discontent and dis- 
honesty on the other. 

Perhaps it may be found difficult to define, with pre- 
cision, the condition here intended. Riches and poverty 
are relative terms. We are all rich, we are all poor, ac- 
cording to the standard of comparison which we adopt. 
In some parts of the world he would be counted rich 
who possesses the means of securing for himself a suffi- 
ciency of food and raiment, warmth and shelter ; while, 
in other phases of society, one might attain to the pos- 
session of all comforts and many luxuries, and yet fall 
short of the common measurement of wealth. In fact, 
the standard of judgment is in the mind, and not in the 



Happy Mediocrity. 



estate. He is a rich man who has the means of gratify- 
ing his wants, be they few or many, great or small, ambi- 
tious or humble ; and he is a poor man, even though his 
title-deeds and securities certify to the largest invest- 
ments, whose greed outgrows his ability to supply it. The 
legislation of God, accordingly, in reference to this sub- 
ject, addresses the heart, teaching us to moderate and 
control desire, so bringing the conditions of contentment, 
and gratitude, and peace within the reach of all. Though 
this be true, both Scripture and observation instruct us 
that there are extremes of condition — wealth, enormous 
wealth, hereditary or acquired ; and poverty — real, pinch- 
ing, pining poverty ; while between these polar extremes 
lies that temperate zone, that table-land of happy medi- 
ocrity, which requires the exercise of our best qualities — 
industry, exertion, economy, self-reliance — and where, by 
virtue of such practices, all our real necessities, as physi- 
cal, intellectual, social, and religious beings, are honestly 
and honorably supplied. The leprosy of a most miserable 
error has already cankered our hearts, if we are indis- 
posed to appreciate the blessedness of such a condition 
for ourselves and our children. 

A traveller from the United States, visiting the Old 
World — especially those parts in which feudal institutions 
have been longest entailed — is painfully struck with the 
inequalities which exist in the condition of different 
classes, reminding him of the results of our winter-storms ; 
here, immense drifts of snow, and there, the ground en- 
tirely bare. The laws of primogeniture, by which prop- 
erty is accumulated and entailed in one line of descent, 
are the support and perpetuity of an aristocratical order. 



104 



Thanksgiving. 



Here is an estate, extending five, ten, or thirty miles, 
including farms, villages, churches, towns, the property 
of a single owner. In some favorite spot, where Nature, 
in her happiest combination of hill and vale, wood and 
water, has done her utmost to delight the eye, rises 
the baronial hall or castle, covering, with its various 
offices, some acres of ground. Sums incalculable have 
been expended in rearing and ornamenting it Within, 
the walls are decorated with costliest art — pictures and 
statues and books, the behests of ages ; while gold and 
silver and tapestries of hereditary value dazzle the un- 
practised eye. Without and around are the grounds 
which rejoice in the perfect cultivation of hundreds of 
years. The grass grows on the smooth lawn as if each 
blade knew the exact measure of the velvet texture. 
Miles of parks are filled — most beautiful of all natural 
growths — with trees, with their " sylvan honors of feudal 
bark," whose massive trunks and wide-spreading tops are 
the copies which nature gives to art, in all kinds of archi- 
tecture — pillar, arch, and roof. Horticulture, with its 
exotic fruits and flowers, is here carried to its perfection, 
while artificial lakes and rivers and cascades are called 
into existence at the summons of affluence. The very 
animals rejoice in sleek abundance ; horses and hounds 
luxuriating in stalls and kennels, which, for cost and com- 
fort and elegance, exceed the largest ambition of an ad- 
jacent peasantry. 

Remote from this is another extreme. An iron hand 
grasps the poor as soon as he is born, and holds him 
down. " A cottage " sounds pleasantly in verse and tale, 
and picturesque is it in a rural landscape, or in the port- 



Happy Mediocrity. 



105 



folio of a tourist, and within many are as good and noble 
and happy hearts, winter and summer, as the world con- 
tains. But, in many parts, the cottages of the poor are 
the abodes of heart-rending distress. The thatch which 
strikes the eye of a summer-traveller so green and pleas- 
ant, in winter black, sour, and mouldy, drops continual 
moisture on the puddly floor of clay or stone, stiffening 
the rheumatic limbs which know no better shelter. Pov- 
erty here is no romantic imagination, but a grim, gaunt, 
and ghastly foe, against which the over-worked fight hard 
for very life. Comforts are not dreamed of ; the struggle 
is whether they shall barely live. It is all hard, down- 
right, back-breaking labor. The choice is not as to the 
wholesomeness and nutritiousness of food ; enough if a 
little of the coarsest, obtained at the hardest, can keep 
off starvation. Excessive toil, and meagre diet, and un- 
suitable dwellings, bring on premature age ; and when 
exhaustion produces sickness, disabling from work, which 
cannot afford a respite, there is no hope for thousands, 
even in a parish poor-house — only in a pauper's grave. 

"Over the stones 
Rattle his bones." 
" Oh, God ! that bread should be so dear 
And flesh and blood so cheap ! " 

Would you know what real poverty is, you must go 
far away among a foreign peasantry. You must look 
upon the men who from their birth are so familiar with 
the load of heavy penury, that their very bodies are bent, 
and they go along cringing, as if in apology for presum- 
ing to live. You must visit foreign manufactories, and 
5* 



io6 



Thanksgiving. 



mark young children creeping out of their miserable 
houses, while it is yet dark, roused from insufficient 
sleep by the stroke of the workhouse-clock — fed on thin 
potations of gruel — pattering along the wet and snowy 
streets with naked feet, deformed in head and limbs, and 
sitting down to their work so solemn, that it cuts you to 
the heart to see children that do not, and cannot smile. 
You must visit yet other lands, where no sort of charity 
pretends to help the helpless ; where no amount of toil 
promises compensation. You must suffer yourself to be 
assailed by a Swiss or Italian beggary, so deformed, so 
diseased, so wan, so importunate, that their forms will 
haunt you in your dreams, touching your very soul with 
the sad cry for pity. Still further eastward must we 
go, for the more despotic kings and sultans are in the 
land of " barbaric pearl and gold," the more miserable 
are the poor. Here is the Great Sahara of human life. 
The victims of famine are computed, every year, by thou- 
sands. The body suffers so much, that the whole man is 
brutalized ; loathsomest things — vermin, insects, reptiles 
— are counted as lucky food for greedy hunger ; and when 
death comes, the human body obtains not the poor re- 
spect of decent interment, but is thrown into the sea, or left 
exposed as a prey to the vulture and the jackal. Thank 
God, if we have not overgrown and aristocratic wealth, 
we have nothing which deserves the name of poverty. 
And if there are any among us who doubt whether we, as 
a people, have occasion to be thankful, even amid judg- 
ments which our own sins and follies have provoked, they 
ought to vacate these fields, which the Lord has blessed, 
and exchange places with the peasantry of Ireland, the 



Happy Mediocrity. 107 



Lazzaroni of Naples, the Arabs of Syria, the Digger 
Indian — who would be glad and grateful enough if they 
might only take the crumbs which now fall from our 
groaning tables. 

Inequalities of social condition will always exist. We 
have no faith in theories which are wiser than Providence, 
or better than the Bible. We do not look for the intro- 
duction of any atheistical-political millennium, in which 
property is to become a common stock, from which each 
is to draw the same amount of rations — a state in which 
there will be no superiority to occasion pride, and no 
inferiority tempting to envy, but " one great plain, without 
protuberance or indentation, over which the whole team 
of human animals, equally yoked, may move on to anni- 
hilation in blessed equanimity " ; and we do well to be- 
ware that no devils' bridges touch our houses, on which 
infidel notions like these may travel, in seemly garb, to 
the overthrow of our social organization. The poor we 
expect to have always with us, and those who are rich 
above their fellows will not be wanting on the earth. 

The perils of the extreme poor are many, and their 
trials severe. Agur prayed most wisely that he might be 
delivered from a state which endangered his honesty. 
Many there are who have battled bravely against adver- 
sity, sternly keeping faith, in extremest penury, with God 
and with themselves. The brightest jewels of truth, honor, 
patience, and meekness, have been found imbedded in 
the rocks and shells and mire of the most abject poverty. 
The lily which floats on the surface of the water, pure and 
fragrant, has its root in the oose and slime. Men there 
are, poorer than any we know, whose hands are hard as 



io8 



Thanksgiving. 



horn ; whose hearts are meek and gentle as a child ; who, 
poor beyond all our experience or conception, would not 
tamper with a dishonest thought for all the wealth of the 
world ; who fight against want with a brave heart to the 
very last, trampling on the sharp thorns in their path 
with a firm foot; hanging the burdens which are too 
heavy to bear, about the wing of faith ; trusting, as did 
Lazarus at the gate of precarious charity, in an invisible 
and almighty Friend, to soothe and glorify the soul at last. 
Nevertheless, it cannot be questioned, that the tendency 
of extreme poverty is to mischief. Political statistics 
prove that crime waits on the footsteps of poverty. Dis- 
tricts remarkable for penury, are equally remarkable for 
violence and vice. As Cowley said in another case, " It 
is hard for a man to keep a steady eye upon truth and 
right, who is always in a battle." The fiercest perils of 
a great and crowded municipality are from the vicious 
poor. The transition from absolute necessity to crime is 
very easy. The poorest man feels that he is a man, and 
that he has a right, like others, to live upon the earth ; and 
once, not having before his eye the fear of Mr. Malthus 
or Mr. McCullough, or any other political economist, he 
had the audacity to marry — and how can he see wife and 
children shivering with cold and starving for want of food, 
when a little taken from the superfluous wealth of the 
affluent, would minister such substantial relief? Then 
come wild musings about the injustice of Providence, and 
these break forth into unconcealed murmurings, im- 
patience, and wrath ; ripening quick in the bitter fruit of 
dishonesty, fraud, robbery, and murder. Well may we 
deprecate a condition which exposes to such temptations. 



Happy Mediocrity, 109 

" Give me not poverty, lest I steal, and take the name of 
God in vain." It is certainly an occasion of gratitude 
that we are not reduced to that degree, which tempts us 
to doing hard and dishonest things, under the pressure of 
necessity. 

In the opposite extreme are the perils of the rich. 
These, it is to be observed, are seldom feared. V\ T e 
should all probably regard ourselves as proof against 
them, and readily would venture upon the encounter with 
this brilliant and flattering enemy, rather than that other 
foe, — rough and implacable want. Riches, an enemy! 
Many speak of them as if in themselves they were an 
evil. Quite the contrary. They are a blessing, if rightly 
used. That surplus of possession which is in excess of 
physical wants, is the power of social progress, the ma- 
terial of civilization ; it is not only the instrument of 
benevolence, bread to the hungry, clothing to the naked, 
but knowledge to the ignorant, the support of the liberal 
arts, the means of all social culture ; and so strews this life 
with blessings, and builds " everlasting habitations " in 
the life to come. Still farther, to guard this part of our 
subject from perversion, we must admit that some of the 
rarest specimens of meekness, condescension, and human- 
ity that ever blessed the world, have been in the mansions 
of the opulent. Nevertheless, it is true, that the ex- 
tremely rich stand on a perilous pinnacle, and the highest 
virtues of our nature are put to the severest test, when 
one's tent is pitched on the enchanted ground of bound- 
less affluence. I have nothing now to say of care in- 
creasing with riches, and which so deranges and distracts 
the mind, that enjoyment is limited in proportion as 



I IO 



Thanksgiving. 



means are multiplied — the lust of wealth growing with 
what it feeds on ; nothing of that common experience 
— satiety of every sense, ennui, weariness, and disgust 
of life, out-living the simplicity of Nature, and the skill 
of art \ for these consequences of perverted wealth have 
been the theme of satire in all ages and in all languages, 
and have been condensed into familiar proverbs — those 
portable results of universal experience. 

Who can doubt that extreme affluence, with its ten- 
dencies to indolence, vanity, self-indulgence, and display, 
puts one beyond the use of many virtues, and exposes 
one to mischief not less perilous, because it is not con- 
sidered vulgar ? " Give me not riches," said Agur, " lest 
I be full and deny thee, and say, Who is the Lord ? " 
This is the portraiture of one who, inflated with wealth, 
regards himself as absolutely independent of God and 
man ; who is rich to the extreme of arrogance, full to 
wantonness, proud to the disdain of all control, and self- 
indulgent, knowing no law but the capacity of pleasure. 
Is it not true that national opulence has, almost invari- 
ably, been followed by national luxury, impatience of 
restraint, corruption of morals, effeminacy of manners, 
enervation of body and mind, and a general deterioration 
of the race, " rotting from sire to son " ? It was over- 
grown wealth, with its necessary consequences, unre- 
deemed and uncontrolled by self-preserving virtue, which 
ruined the successive dynasties of ancient empire, and 
prostrated the glory of kingdoms before the lusty strength 
of barbaric invasion. We have need to be reminded of 
these tendencies, because every thing around us stimulates 
the lust for possession. National thought and legislation 



Happy Mediocrity. 



1 1 1 



and enterprise all converge on the increase of national 
opulence. Our tendencies as a people are to extrava- 
gance ; and extravagance is always a crime. The passion 
for acquisition is so intense that it gives an expression, it 
is said, to the national features and the carriage of the 
person. Advertisers, wishing to give the greatest pub- 
licity, whether to a political nomination or the sale of 
their wares, have ascertained that the best place for post- 
ing them is upon the pavement, and along the very edge 
of the gutter, as if in the city all were the worshippers 
and followers of him whom Milton has immortalized in 
his epic : 

" Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell 
From heaven ; for e'en in heaven his looks and thoughts 
Were always downwards bent, admiring more 
The riches of heaven's pavement — trodden gold — 
Than aught divine or holy else enjoyed 
In vision beatific." 

There is, then, such a thing as a wise preference in 
regard to condition. There is an intermediate state 
equally removed from great poverty and great riches, 
most favorable to virtue, most conducive to happiness, 
the safest and most blessed of all earthly allotments ; and 
though even this has many diversities and gradations, 
it is an occasion of thankfulness to God that the lines 
have fallen to us within these goodly limitations. 

1 I have already hinted that it may not be easy to define 
with precision what is intended by this happy mediocrity. 
Perhaps we shall not stray far from the truth if we fix 
the boundaries at the point where work is required and 



ii2 Thanksgiving. 



work is adequately rewarded. Surely, that condition in 
life which demands and develops self-exertion, and which 
compensates that exertion with a competency, is rich 
enough in all substantial blessings. I have chosen the 
word work, and that other word, self-exertion, rather than 
labor, because we are accustomed to associate with the 
latter more of intensity and drudgery and severity than 
we might like. Mr. Thomas Hood has rendered a most 
kindly service, in the interest of humanity, in those 
poems, the " Song of the Shirt," the " Workhouse Clock," 
and the " Lay of the Laborer," in which he has so skil- 
fully depicted the sufferings of those who are doomed to 
severe labor, but are denied an adequate compensation. 
It is in the last of these that he describes one asking for 
nothing but honest work and honest remuneration : 

" A spade, a rake, a hoe ! 
A pickaxe, or a bill ! 
A hook to reap, or a scythe to mow, 
A flail, or what you will — 
And here's a ready hand 
To ply the needful tool, 
And skill'd enough, by lessons rough 
In labor's rugged school. 

" Aye, only give me work, 
And then you need not fear 
That I shall snare his Worship's hare, 
Or kill his Grace's deer ; 
Break into his Lordship's house 
To steal the plate so rich ; - 
Or leave the yeoman that had a purse 
To welter in a ditch. 



Happy Mediocrity. 1 13 

" Wherever Nature needs, 
Wherever Labor calls, 
No job I'll shirk, of the hardest work, 
To shun the workhouse walls. 
My only claim is this, 
With labor stiff and stark, 
By lawful turn my living to earn, 
Between the light and dark. 

" No parish money, or loaf, 
No pauper badges for me, — 
A son of the soil, by right of toil 
Entitled to my fee. 
No alms I ask ; give me my task : 
Here are the arms, the leg, 
The strength, the sinews of a man, 
To work, and not to beg. 

" Still one of Adam's heirs, 
Though doom'd by chance of birth 
To dress so mean, and to eat the lean, 
Instead of the fat of the earth ; 
To make such humble meals 
As honest labor can, 
A bone and a crust, with a graee to God, 
And little thanks to man." 

Now just this is the description of our social state. 
There is work enough for all ; all are required to work ; 
and, saving painful exceptions, work is sufficiently re- 
warded. We hear sometimes slang phrases in regard 
to the " laboring class," when, in truth, we all belong to 
it. We have no strata of society separable one from the 
other, by a necessity of work imposed upon one from 
which others are exempt. This word work does not de- 



1 1 4 



Thanksgiving. 



fine the occupation ; as if he only was a workman who 
employs the muscles of the arm and the back. Where 
estates are not entailed in one line of accumulation, the 
whole population is placed under this necessity, — let us 
change the word under the privilege of self-exertion. He 
is a workman who employs his brain, as much as he who 
wields a sledge or plies a spade. In such a state of 
society we should expect the utmost expansion of the 
inventive faculties, and an illimitable variety of methods 
by which to earn an honest living. A studious lawyer, a 
learned physician, a good teacher, a sagacious merchant, 
and a good minister, work no less than those addicted 
to manual labor. No less ? The clock strikes six, the 
shop is shut, and the tired mechanic finds that sleep is 
sweet ; but he whose work is with that finer organ, the 
brain, knows no such ready suspension. Thought can- 
not be recalled so quickly, and a sleepless night often 
follows the work of the day. Those will always be 
found who are expert in devising methods of shirking 
this law of work ; and these are busy-bodies, meddling 
with other men's matters. In a country where govern- 
ment patronage is so immense as in ours, and where 
this is dispensed by such a frequent rotation in office, 
by popular elections, there is no kind of genteel idle- 
ness from which we have more to apprehend than that 
which makes politics a profession, foregoing all regu- 
lar and honest work, and expecting to clutch some spoils 
from the revolving wheel. Dr. Parr, being asked on 
one occasion, by a young man who wished to draw him 
into a discussion, "What he thought of the introduc- 
tion of evil into the world," simply replied, " that in his 



Happy Mediocrity. 



opinion, we could have got along very well without it." 
Politics belong to all good patriots ; but these, of course, 
are incidental, and correlative to other personal pur- 
suits j and oftentimes we are inclined to think the affairs 
of State would go along most swimmingly, if there were 
not. so many who, too lazy or maladroit to take care of 
themselves by working with their own hands, spend their 
whole life in an immodest and meddlesome taking care 
of the State. There may be times when we are all dis- 
posed to wish the rigor of work were somewhat relaxed, 
and that its sternness were somewhat more indulgent of 
repose. Sometimes her brow is knit with care, and soil- 
ed with dirt, and her voice imperative and harsh ; but, 
next to religion, she is the best friend we have in the 
world. 

To say of any possession that it was well-earned, is 
the quality which gives it its chief value. To enjoy the 
fruits of our own industry, is the richest pleasure. To 
be able, with God's blessing, to provide for ourselves 
and our children, is the very luxury of life — personal 
independence. This is better than to be fed passively 
by angels. 

There is an invisible wealth in possessions acquired 
by personal industry and economy, which cannot be com- 
puted by the numeration table. The fancy strikes an 
affluent nobleman or a king, that he will erect a palace. 
With a sort of creative fiat, he says, " Let it be built," and 
it is built. With no farther care on the part of the 
lordly proprietor, the " fabric huge rises like an exhala- 
tion," and when complete, my lord chamberlain's order, 
or a banker's check, covers all the disbursements. A man 



1 1 6 Thanksgiving. 

in circumstances of mediocrity undertakes to build a 
house for his personal use. First of all is any amount of 
contriving and planning. Long before the first stone is 
laid, he has studied out every convenience, and imagination 
has invested every apartment with a wealth of domestic 
delights. Already he sees the fireside where he will seek 
repose, when weary ; already he hears the winter's hail 
and rain beating upon the roof, which gives to content- 
ment so sweet a shelter. He overhears the voices of 
happy children, and watches all the pleasant offices of 
cheerful housewifery. Then industry puts to her hand. 
Economy is brought into play, and at length the grateful 
proprietor takes possession of what, under God, is his 
own — all his own — earned by his own honest hand. 
Think you not, there is here more of real pleasure and 
comfort — I like much that good old English word — than 
in all the sumptuousness of royal palaces? 

Walking sometimes along the thoroughfares of the 
city, I have detected myself in the national habit of guess- 
ing at the condition and thoughts of strangers, so easily 
recognized as they pass. Here is a plain and most 
worthy couple from the country, accompanied by their 
son and daughter. They have just purchased that com- 
fortable coat for the one, and that nice muff for the other, 
upon which both are looking with such entire complacency. 
That purchase has been the theme of many a domestic 
conversation. Those parents have anticipated the need 
of it, wondered whether they could accomplish it, denied 
themselves a little here and there, and now, in obtaining 
their wish, they have purchased a pleasure for themselves 
for the whole season, of which the millionaire never 



Happy Mediocrity. 117 



dreamed when despatching an order to a draper for his 
fastidious children. 

If there be such a gratification in expending for one's 
self whatever is honorably earned, who shall compute the 
value of that which, industriously acquired, has been well 
husbanded and well spent for the benefit of another ? 
Gifts which have no self-denial in them, lose half their 
worth. See that small treasure in the hands of frugal 
industry. It is not a part of a large dividend or legacy. 
Every coin of it has in it days and nights of work. 
Against how many temptations has it been kept ! One 
would like to retain it. How many conveniences it would 
purchase for one's self. But it has been saved for an- 
other — an indigent parent, an unfortunate brother, a 
widowed sister, a dependent child. Tearful blessings are 
in that money, for him who gives and him who receives. 
Call not that unrighteous mammon. Count not that as 
common pelf, or as the unmissed donation of the opulent. 
It is the coinage of love, and God's blessing is with it 
wherever it goes. That condition of life which affords 
no place for self-denial, robs life of the noblest virtue. 

Am I at fault, when asserting that this condition of 
mediocrity is the proper domain of the affections ? Ex- 
treme penury produces insensibility, as drowning men lose 
regard for others in the impulse of self-preservation ; 
while the opposite extreme of affluence makes one in- 
dependent both of love and hate. Disappointed expec- 
tations or alleged injustice in the disposal of great estates, 
have alienated many opulent families ; while the affections 
of those in humble life are more closely cemented by the 
trials which they share in common. Those who are 



1 1 8 Thanksgiving. 



allied, not merely by consanguinity, but the common 
necessity of exertion, must be moved by the liveliest 
sympathy in each other's success. The self-denying effort 
which a parent expends on his children, deepens his own 
love for them ; and children, observing with what an 
amount of tender care they are clothed and educated, will 
be prompt to repay the act with more than ordinary grati- 
tude and affection. So it is, that those who walk along 
the middle course of life, will generally be found most 
distinguished for love and sympathy and domestic hap- 
piness. 

Tell me on what holy ground 
May domestic peace be found : 
Halcyon daughter of the skies, 
Far, on fearful wing, she flies, 
From the pomp of sceptered state, 
From the rebel's noisy hate. 

In a humble home she dwells, 
Listening to the Sabbath-bells ; 
Still around her steps are seen 
Spotless honor's meeker mien ; 
Love, the fire of pleasing years. 
Sorrow, smiling through her tears, 
And, conscious of the past employ, 
Memory, bosom-spring of joy. 

All have observed that familiar phenomenon, the re- 
flection of objects from the surface of still waters. In 
hours of grateful recollection, when there is no ripple on 
the placid surface of the heart, we gaze at the pictures 
which are so faithfully mirrored therein. With us it is 
not the Lake of Avernus, shadowed with gloomy woods, 



Happy Mediocrity. 



119 



of which Homer and Virgil both have sung ; nor that 
Thessalian Fount which reflected the image of Narcissus ; 
nor the Italian Como, rendering back cultivated terraces 
and classic architecture. Look at the scenes pictured in 
our own " chambers of imagery." There are houses in 
the landscape of various styles and dimensions. They 
are unlike any you have seen elsewhere. They have no 
resemblance to the Swiss chalat, the French chateau, the 
English hall or cottage, the Irish hovel, or the slave's 
cabin. Here is one of goodly size and shape, painted of 
cleanly white, with green blinds ; it is approached by the 
" front yard " and a straight gravel-walk ; and around it 
are cherry trees and lilac bushes and sweet roses, and 
hard by the great barn, and the meadow with cattle that 
would charm the eye of Paul Potter and Rosa Bonheur ; 
and within are the evidences of inexpensive tastes and 
refinement and plenty. 

Not far distant is another of still humbler preten- 
sions, built in defiance of all orders of architecture : for 
preservation, and not for ornament, it is painted red ; the 
long steep roof on one side descends nearly to the 
ground ; and banks of tanbark are laid against the un- 
derpinning to keep out the frost from the cellar. We 
enter; it is neither the home of affluence nor the dwell- 
ing-place of penury ; but the home of happy mediocrity. 
There are no sumptuous carpets of foreign looms to be 
faded by the warm and bright sun which shines in with 
no' obstruction ; the floor is sanded by the hand of clean- 
liness ; in the fire-place, if it be summer, you will see 
sprigs of feathery asparagus so arranged as to hide the 
jambs, smoked and blackened by the winter's generous 



120 



Thanksgiving. 



fire,* by the side of which many a group has listened to 
the stories of the Indian wars and the Revolution, and 
where many a prayer has been offered up, precisely when 
the town-bell was rung for nine o'clock in the evening, 
the whole household, in snug contentment, going to hon- 
est sleep before the time when the jaded votaries of fash- 
ion in the city are beginning to dress for luxurious dissi- 
pation. It is the home of simplicity and truth and love ; 
and every thing within and without wears the aspect of 
decency, and healthiness of body and mind as far re- 
moved from the excitements, revulsions, temptations, and 
disgusts of the town, as the soft pictures of Claude from 
the wild and terrific creations of Salvator Rosa. 

Somewhere in the landscape you are sure to find 
a certain building, bearing no resemblance to the Acade- 
mies or Lyceums of classic Greece ; yet prolific of all 
things good and great — the country school-house. What 
memories come thronging back at the mention of the 
place — 

We ne'er forget — though there we are forgot — 

the low, square, red school-house, with its hard seats, 
straight backs, and narrow desks ; the mistress' chair ; the 
entrance of the noisy group at the tap of thimbled finger 
on the window • the act of " manners " at the door, the 
low-dropped courtesy, the head-long bow ; the sports of 
changing seasons, the nut-tree, the " huckleberry " pas- 
ture, the squirrel-trap, the skating-pond ; the long winter 

* " Yea, he warmeth himself, and saith, Aha ! I am warm ; / 
have seen the fire" Is. 44 : 16. 



Happy Mediocrity. 111 



evenings with books and slate and household games ; 
examination day, when, in the presence of committee- 
men, deacons, and minister, were paraded out those 

" bright and ordered files 

Like spring flowers, in their best array, 

All silence and all smiles, 
Save that each little voice in turn 

Some glorious truth proclaims, 
What sages would have died to learn, 

Now taught by cottage dames." 

Keble. 

The Puritan School, strictly so called, is now an 
obsolete institution. No one expects that it ever can be 
revived. The New England Primer cannot again be 
used in the District School. We cannot say much in 
praise of the poetry or the fine arts of that remarkable 
book. We laugh at some of its rhyming alliterations 
and uncouth pictures. But the jingle of its rhyme car- 
ried a truth, and the woodcut made an impression. It 
contained the portrait of " the Honorable John Hancock, 
Esq., President of the American Congress ; " " the young 
Infant's morning and evening prayers, from Dr. Watts ; " 
" the Lord's Prayer ; " " the Apostles' Creed ; " " the 
Golden Rule ; " " Agur's Prayer ; " the picture of Mr. 
" John Rogers dying courageously for the Gospel of Jesus 
Christ;" and "the Shorter Catechism." Hard would it 
be to find any thing better to be wrought into the brain 
and - bones of those who, in a free republic, are expected 
to illustrate the virtues and blessings of the happiest so- 
cial condition. 

More conspicuous still is another object in the scene — 
6 



122 Thanksgiving. 

the house of God, with its silent finger pointing ever to 
the sky, and hard by the grave-yard, 

Where the rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep. 

No architectural pretensions are there ; no storied win- 
dow, few contrivances for convenience, and none for lux- 
ury and cushioned indulgence. But beneath that old 
sounding-board stands a man who, for a moderate sti- 
pend, faithfully did all the preaching and public praying 
for the town ; who, oft as the Sabbath came, with a steady 
hand, and a calm voice, gave forth the word of God, whe- 
ther men would hear or whether they did forbear ; and 
who, on the memorable days of Fasting and Thanksgiving, 
exercised his liberty, so as it was never done before or 
since, in uttering his mind round and full about the polit 
ical affairs of the country. Burns has given us an in- 
comparable description of the Cotter's Saturday night in 
Scotland ; but the most poetical image we can recall, is 
that of a New England Sabbath morning, in the olden 
time ; so bright, so calm ; so fragrant with odors of roses 
and clover ; so profoundly still that you could hear the 
buzzing of a fly in the sun, and the crowing of the cock 
echoed on from one end of the village to the other, and 
well-clad, honest, and happy people left their unfastened 
and unmolested homes, and went up together to worship 
the God of their fathers. 



THE BLESSEDNESS OF TEARS. 



They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. 

Ps. 126 : 5. 



VI. 



THE BLESSEDNESS OF TEARS. 

The Proclamations appointing the annual Thanks- 
giving, invariably make mention of an abundant harvest 
as one of the objects which ought to excite our gratitude 
to Almighty God. How many pleasing images are sug- 
gested by that one word — harvest ! Fields covered with 
grain, ripe for the reaper's sickle ; the corn, whose silken 
banners a little while ago were playing with the west-wind, 
now ready for the garner ; wains loaded with fragrant 
spoils ; barns bursting with abundance ; the harvest-moon 
standing still for a week, prolonging the farmer's oppor- 
tunity, as once it stood for another kind of harvest in the 
valley of Ajalon ; the animals stalled in the midst of 
comfort and plenty ; the homestead, where cheerfulness 
laughs at want : wonder not that poetry has gathered up 
these associations and set them to blithesome music, in 
every age, and in every tongue, to celebrate the rich and 
jocund autumn. 

For all this abundant and joyful reaping, there was an 
earlier season of toilsome sowing. The ground was pre- 
pared by great painstaking to receive its trust. The 
heavy plough was dragged along its surface, ripping open 



126 Thanksgiving. 



the sod, tearing up the very roots of the grass, disem- 
bowelling the earth, exposing its quiet secrets to the 
winds and storms and suns ; it was overturned and har- 
rowed as by instruments of torture ; and if this were the 
first time in which it was subjected to the process, the 
trees and shrubs which had grown there unmolested were 
cut down by the sharp ax, and burned with fire. All 
these amputations, and severities, and seeming cruelties, 
all this toil in making ready the ground for its office, and 
then the actual burial of the seed out of sight, in the 
bosom of the earth — sad symbol of the disposal of the 
human body, amid tears and mournings, where it is to see 
corruption — all these were the necessary antecedents of 
the joy and plenty, the gladness and wealth, of the golden 
harvest. 

There is a harvest of contentment, and cheerfulness, 
and plenty, and peace, and joy, in every true life, and 
there is a preparatory sowing for the same, in toil, trouble, 
and tears. 

Young readers will not comprehend my meaning at 
first, since they have always associated tears with misery ■ 
but I am greatly mistaken if adult experience does not 
catch a glimpse of the sentiment even before it is unfolded 
as an occasion of gratitude. " They that sow in tears 
shall reap in joy." Tears are the seed of a joyful harvest. 

Let us understand one another at the beginning. I 
am no enemy to laughter, if it be of the right quality — ; 
the offspring of good nature, and not of pride. Philoso- 
phers have defined laughter to be the property of rational 
beings ; animals weep, but do not laugh. So long as it 
is the expression of cheerfulness, and not of folly ; of 



The Blessedness of Tears. 



127 



humor, and not fantastic levity ; of true wit, and not of 
cruel ridicule, let us hope that we may never be too wise 
to indulge in it. 

An old monk of the Papal Church, preaching from 
the text, " I said of laughter, it is mad ; and of mirth, 
what doeth it ? " lays down the doctrine that " laughter 
was the effect of original sin, and that Adam could not 
laugh before the fall." Our first impulse pronounces that 
a falsehood ; but the more you revolve it, the more will 
you be convinced that the point furnishes ampler material 
for discussion than many others which have employed 
monastic wit. Probably there is no metaphor which is so 
common in all languages as that of laughing applied to 
nature, when the fields are covered with verdure and 
flowers, and the trees with blossoms, and the streams are 
running and leaping in their playful freedom ; so that we 
must interpret the term as an expression of innocent joy. 
Nevertheless, are we not disposed to regard the happi- 
ness of the first pair, made in the image of God, as too 
deep and serene to express itself in mirthful convulsions? 
We never think of the angels — whose joy is as perfect as 
their holiness — as inclined to laughter, though it does 
not strike us as incongruous when poetic conception de- 
scribes them in tears, as the expression of a benevolent 
sensibility — a kind and blessed pity. Was it not a most 
philosophical accuracy which led Milton to connect the 
only act of laughter to be found in his immortal epic, not 
with the sinless angels winging their joyful ministries 
through the realms of God, but with the fallen spirits in- 
venting and discharging their artillery, rallying their 
opponents in a string of diabolic puns on the effects pro- 



128 



Thanksgiving. 



ducecl by their curious enginery ? We do not associate 
frivolous laughter with what is grand and heroic. It was 
exquisitely natural and human for Virgil, in that episode 
of the .ZEneid which describes the games and diversions 
of the Trojans, to relax into a laugh — the only one in the 
book — when Mencetes was thrown overboard from his 
boat, and left to dry himself upon a rock. After all that 
may be said in defence or advocacy of laughter, it is not 
the expression of the highest and best qualities of our 
nature. It has its uses, it has its place, it has its time ; 
but the best sensibilities of the soul, like deep waters, 
flow smooth and still. The most wearisome person in 
the world is a perpetual laugher. Like shallow water 
running along a rocky bottom, the noisiest of all streams, 
he betrays his want of depth by a constant cachinnation. 
There is too much that is pleasing, too much that is gro- 
tesque, in this world, for us never to laugh at all ; there is 
too much which is serious and earnest and great, to allow 
us to laugh always. 

It was necessary to say so much on this subject, that 
I might not be misunderstood when I come to speak of 
another. It was needful that I should confess that I be- 
lieved — after a certain way — in laughter, that the reader 
might not be repelled by the assertion that I believe 
also in tears. 

Tears ! an occasion for thanksgiving. ' Perhaps you 
intend to adduce them in proof of the divine benignity, 
after the manner of Paley. Perhaps you intend to give 
us a physiological argument for the goodness of God 
from the structure of the eye. Tears ! why, I can describe 
them and their uses very quickly,' says the anatomist. 



The Blessedness of Tears. 



129 



' They are a limpid fluid, of a saltish taste, secreted by 
the lachrymal glands, somewhat heavier than water, con- 
taining pure soda, also muriate, carbonate, and phosphate 
of soda, and phosphate of lime. Their use is to prevent 
the pellucid cornea from becoming dry and opaque ; 
they prevent the pain which would otherwise arise from 
the friction of the eyelids against the bulb of the eye, 
and they wash away the dirt and every thing acrid that 
has fallen into the eye. In a natural state, the quantity 
is just sufficient for these uses ; but when stimulated by 
sorrow or any thing pungent, they are secreted so fast, 
that, unable to be discharged through the proper conduit, 
they overflow from the internal angle of the eyelids, in 
the form of copious drops, upon the cheek, and so relieve 
the head from congestion ! ' That sounds very good, 
very wise ; but that is not what I wish to say. 

Tears — perhaps you intend to entertain us with all 
the conceits which the poets have associated with the 
name. Have they not been likened a thousand times to 
pearls and diamonds ? Did not Rogers give us a fine 
thought when he wrote — 

" That very law which moulds a tear, 
And bids it trickle from its source, 
That law preserves the earth a sphere, 
And guides the planets in their course." 

Has not the author of Lalla Rookh elaborated an Orien- 
tal romance, " Paradise and the Peri," out of the value 
of a tear, caught from the cheek of Penitence, and made 
the passport through those celestial gates which will be 
opened to no other bribe ? Aye, but this is trenching fast 



130 



Thanksgiving. 



upon the very truth and sobriety of my theme, and I must 
desist a while. It is nothing learned, nothing philosoph- 
ical, nothing poetic, nothing curious, nothing extraor- 
dinary, which I propose in the theme already announced. 
I take tears as the symbols of grief and affliction; real, 
bitter, scalding tears, the signs and consequences of actual 
sorrow. When we dwell, on festal occasions, upon those 
mercies which lend brightness to life, there are those who 
feel that they cannot sympathize with the strain, inas- 
much as they are conversant with keenest suffering. 
Many cannot be excited to cheerfulness and gratitude by 
the description of those objects which are the occasion 
of joy to others, because many of those objects have 
been withdrawn from themselves, and in their place are 
losses and bereavements. We must not blink the case 
of such. No man will ever be cheated into a sense of 
gratitude by any attempt to render him oblivious to his 
griefs. Whatever cheerfulness you succeed in imparting 
to sorrow, must be administered in that sorrow, and 
through it, and by means of it, rather than by any attempts 
to obstruct its flow. What empiricism, w r hat ignorance 
of our nature, are implied in all attempts to cheer and 
comfort a real grief by the action of contrasts ! Mirth to 
a heavy heart is like vinegar upon nitre. Sorrow hugs to 
itself the very memory which haunts it, and never will it 
consent to have it torn away by violence. We must meet 
afflictions just as they are, and inquire whether there be 
not a goodness in them for which we should be thankful.* 

* How profound the philosophy of Mr. Coleridge on this sub- 
ject. As he that taketh away a garment in cold zveather and as vinegar 
upon nitre, so is he that singeth songs to a heavy heart, Prov. 25 : 20. 



The Blessedness of Tears. 131 



Tears there are in many an eye ; we are quite content 
to retain them if there be a method by which they can be 
shown to be the very instruments of cheerfulness — as the 
rain-drops on a summer's afternoon bring out to view 

Worldly mirth is so far from curing spiritual grief, that even worldly- 
grief, where it is great and takes deep root, is not allayed but in- 
creased by it. A man who is full of inward heaviness, the more he is 
encompassed about with mirth, it exasperates and enrages his grief 
the more ; like ineffectual weak physic, which removes not the hu- 
mor, but stirs it and makes it more unquiet. But spiritual joy is 
seasonable for all estates : in prosperity, it is pertinent to crown 
and sanctify all other enjoyments, with this which so far surpasses 
them ; and in distress, it is the only Nepenthe, the cordial of fainting 
spirits : so, Psal. 4 : 7, He hath put joy into my heart. This mirth 
makes way for itself, which other mirth cannot do. These songs 
are sweetest in the night of distress. 

There is something exquisitely beautiful and touching in the 
first of these similes : and the second, though less pleasing to the 
imagination, has the charm of propriety, and expresses the transition 
with equal force and liveliness. A grief of recent birth is a sick in- 
fant that must have its medicine administered in its milk, and sad 
thoughts are the sorrowful heart's natural food. This is a com- 
plaint that is not to be cured by opposites, which for the most part 
only reverse the symptoms while they exasperate the disease — or 
like a rock in the mid-channel of a river, swoln by a sudden rain- 
flush from the mountain, which only detains the excess of waters 
from their proper outlet, and make them foam, roar, and eddy. The 
soul, in her desolation, hugs the sorrow close to her, as her sole re- 
maining garment : and this must be drawn off so gradually, and the 
garment to be put in its stead so gradually slipt on, and feel so like 
the former, that the sufferer shall be sensible of the change only by 
the refreshment. The true spirit of consolation is well content to 
detain the tear in the eye, and finds a surer pledge of its success in 
the smile of resignation that dawns through that, than in the liveliest 
shows of a forced and alien exhilaration. — Aids to Reflection, p. 54. 



132 



Thanksgiving. 



the splendid bow of God. When the Scripture tells us 
that sorrow is better than laughter, that it is good to be 
afflicted, rely upon it, such expressions are not a pretence 
or mockery — 

" Which keep the word of promise to the ear, 
And break it to our hope." 

There is a profound truth in these sayings which it is 
wise for us to comprehend. Having been cheered into 
smiles by those forms and expressions of Divine goodness 
which we call blessings, let us now inquire whether there 
be not a power to produce the same effect in what we are 
accustomed to regard as evils — even the griefs, wrongs, 
and troubles which extort the bitterest tears. 

" In the account which Plato gives us of the conver- 
sation and behavior of Socrates, the morning he was to 
die, he tells the following circumstance. Socrates, whose 
fetters were knocked off (as was usual to be done on the 
day that the condemned person was to be executed), 
being seated in the midst of his disciples, and laying one 
of his legs on the other, in a very unconcerned posture, 
began to rub it where it had been galled by the iron ; 
and whether it was to show the indifference with which 
he entertained the thoughts of his approaching death, or 
(after his usual manner) to take every occasion of philos- 
ophizing upon some useful subject, he observed the pleas- 
ure of that sensation which now arose in those very parts 
of his leg that just before had been so much pained by 
the fetter. Upon this he reflected on the nature of pleas- 
ure and pain in general, and how constantly they succeed 



The Blessedness of Tears. 133 

one another. To this he added, that if a man of a good 
genius for a fable were to represent the nature of pleas- 
ure and pain in that way of writing, he would probably 
join them together after such a manner, that it would be 
impossible for the one to come into any place without 
being followed by the other." * 

Acting upon this suggestion, Mr. Addison has con- 
structed a fable, the substance of which is this : That 
Pleasure and Pain, two beings of a very different pedi- 
gree, belonging to two families always at variance, came 
into this world of ours, the one to take possession of the 
virtuous, the other of the vicious ; but, after many experi- 
ments, they discovered that they often laid claim to the 
same individual — that in this intermediate planet of ours 
there was no person so vicious who had not some good in 
him, nor any person so virtuous who had not in him 
some evil. To avoid dispute, and come to some accom- 
modation, a marriage was proposed between them, and at 
length concluded ; by which means it is that we find 
Pleasure and Pain are such constant yoke-fellows, and 
that they either make their visits together, or are never 
far asunder. If Pain comes into a heart, he is quickly 
followed by Pleasure ; and if Pleasure enters, you may 
be sure Pain is not far off. 

Do we mean by all this, nothing more than the com- 
monplace sentiment that our pleasures are heightened by 
contrast ? that the most direct method of promoting a 
cheerful contentment, is to recall the troubles from which 
we have been delivered, and the sorrows through which 



* Spectator, No. 183. 



J 34 



Thanksgiving. 



we have passed ? By no means. This would be but a 
small part of the truth. Nevertheless, this decimal part 
of the truth is too important to be overlooked. One of 
the inspired lyrics (Ps. 126) is set to this very sentiment. 
It was the outburst of joy and gratitude, in view of a great 
national deliverance. Reinstated amid the freedom and 
blessings of the Holy City, the Church enhanced its 
gladness by looking back to the shame and loneliness of 
heathen bondage — and thus she sang : " When the Lord 
turned again the captivity of Zion, we were like them that 
dream. Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and 
our tongue with singing. The Lord hath done great 
things for us, whereof we are glad. They that sow in 
tears shall reap in joy. He that goeth forth and weepeth, 
bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with 
rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him." 

Following this idea, how many are filled with grati- 
tude when contrasting their present condition with what 
it was in former days of bitterness and trouble. Seated 
by his cheerful fire-side, or resting on his quiet pillow, 
one remembers the nights of tempest and gloom when he 
confronted death on a wreck at sea, and the louder the 
storm howls around his dwelling, the deeper is the sense 
of happy security and contentment. The man now in 
possession of a competency looks back to days of penury, 
when he began life alone, and struggled hard with many 
a grim and defiant trouble — to other days, when property 
was wrecked and credit low ; and recalling what God has 
done for him since, in giving him abundance, he is moved 
by the contrast to lively pleasure. In the enjoyment of 
health we remember the days of debility, when food had 



The Blessedness of Tears. 135 



lost its relish, and the nights when pain held our eyes 
waking, and the memory becomes the fount of gratitude. 
The conception of ancient mythology, which represented 
departed spirits as drinking of Lethean waters, and there- 
by becoming oblivious to all the sufferings of life, is most 
heathen and cruel. Far different is the wisdom of the 
Scriptures, which, by every appliance, would quicken mem- 
ory and never benumb it ; which would counsel us to 
look back from every eminence in our advancing journey 
upon the way in which God has led us, and which has 
promised us at the last, as the inspiration to an immortal 
song, a vision of all the woes and miseries and perils of 
life, from that world of blessedness where we shall drink 
of another and sweeter river than Lethe — 

" Which flows through a land where they do not forget — 
Which sheds over memory only repose, 
And takes from it only regret." 

The great body of those odes which compose our in- 
spired hymnology, are set to this very key-note — grati- 
tude to God, in memory of personal and national troubles, 
from which he has wrought our deliverance. This is the 
philosophy of Christian joy — the harvest-reaping coming 
after the sowing of tears. Nor can I think of a surer 
method of promoting rational cheerfulness, when families 
are assembled at their domestic festival, than conversing 
together about earlier struggles and depressions ; how 
they wrestled with difficulties in getting a start in life ; 
of the self-denials which parents practised to give a son 
an education ; of the brave trust with which they battled 



136 



Thanksgiving. 



with many a trouble — days of gloom and of bitterness, 
which have been succeeded by brighter skies and a truer 
sweetness. 

While all this is true, it is not the pith of my subject. 
We must advance most decidedly, and say that tears have 
a blessing of their own. Without equivocation or reserve, 
I mean that tears and joys are immediately related, as 
sowing and reaping, as means and ends, as beginnings 
and issues. It is no poetic conceit concerning the 
" luxury of grief," devised by those who never knew the 
touch of actual sorrow, as one of the ancients wrote on 
the advantages of poverty when he had two millions out 
at usury ; it is no notion of Pagan stoicism, denying the 
existence of evil, and counselling insensibility under that 
which is so called ; it is nothing like either that I would 
employ to delude the sorrowful into a better bearing of 
their grief ; but the sober, honest truth, that sorrow, like 
the rains and plowing of the Spring, does us good. He 
is only half-educated who is conversant with prosperity 
only. There cannot be the richest harvest in the soul 
and life of that man who has not passed through the 
preparatory process of sowing in tears. 

Seneca, discoursing on a kindred subject, puts into 
the mouth of Demetrius this remarkable saying : " Noth- 
ing would be more unhappy than a man who had never 
known affliction." A notable saying, most certainly ! 
It is something more than the truism that prosperity may 
prove an injury by pampering our passions with over-fond 
and mistaken indulgences. Mark the word : " Nothing 
would be more unhappy" — the Latin, infelix, does not 
mean unfortunate merely, but unblessed — nothing would 



The Blessedness of Tears. 137 

be more unhappy and unblessed than one who had never 
known affliction. Just what the ax, and plough, and har- 
row, and storm and rain, do for the mould, developing 
its latent properties, tearful afflictions accomplish in our 
own conscious being. It is a phenomenon familiar to those 
who are engaged in clearing new countries, that often- 
times, as the ax levels the forest, fountains of waters, till 
then concealed, spring to the surface. That illustrates 
what takes place in the human heart when sharp afflic- 
tions prostrate the pride and the strength which have 
overshadowed affections deep-seated and unknown. Par- 
adoxical as it may sound to the inexperienced, we are 
enriched by losses ; and many a man has emerged from 
sorrow wiser, happier than before. The rod has struck 
the rock, and from the hard and flinty bosom has gushed 
forth a sensibility which brings a blessing. Sympathy 
with others, gentleness, patience, love, forgiveness, meek- 
ness, — are they not all qualities of a benign mood ? — are 
nurtured always and only amid real tears. Let a man be 
subject all his life to the hot glare of prosperity, and the 
same effect is produced on his sensibilities as on a clayey 
soil by the summer solstice — it is baked hard and dry. 
Mr. Dombey stands as the pattern of the class — hard, 
cold, stiff, iron ; the world made for him, and his proud 
will the central power. He needs to be softened, and 
affliction must do it. To make a man of him, something 
must touch the hidden fountain of tears. To make him 
thankful, cheerful, and serenely happy, he must suffer. 
To make one blessed, the iron stiffness must come out 
from pride and stateliness ; before one can weep for joy, 
he must weep for sorrow ; before one can become con- 



Thanksgiving. 



scious of the deep power and blessedness of his own 
being, he must bow his head to stormy sorrows, and be- 
come a little child. Goethe has hit a noble truth : 

" lie who ne'er eats his bread with sighs, 
Or through the live-long night 
Ne'er weeping on his pillow lies, 
Knows not divine delight." * 

In the Sketch-Book of Mr. Irving there is one piece, 
entitled " The Wife," which is the general favorite of 
young gentlemen of a certain age, and it is much to 
their credit and honor that it is so. It represents a city- 
merchant unexpectedly and irretrievably embarrassed in 
affairs, and brought down from affluence to bankruptcy. 
Vacating his opulent mansion, and taking a modest cot- 
tage in the rural suburbs, he is just about to go to his 
new home, to join his young wife — and he is tortured 
with the apprehension of finding her weary, dejected, and 
disconsolate. Instead of this, a new chapter in life, be- 
fore unread, is opened to his eye. She comes tripping 
forth to the gate to meet him, full of cheerfulness and de- 
light ; and to his astonishment he discovers that his 
dreaded disasters have given birth to a novel content- 
ment and enjoyment. Has not that experience been re- 
duplicated many times in seasons of commercial distress ? 
When gallant fortunes are wrecked, a minister of religion 

* " Wer nie sein Brod mit Thranen ass, 
Wer nie durch lange Mitterniichte 
Aut seinem Bette weinend sass, 
Der kennt euch nicht, ihr hohen Machte." 



The Blessedness of Tears. 



l 39 



moves about endeavoring to cheer those who are afflict- 
ed by the loss of their estate, with the best sympathy 
and cordials he can administer. A year passes, and what 
is the result ? You were forced to reduce and retrench 
your expenses to a very low degree ; you dispensed with 
familiar luxuries ; you made many sacrifices ; you have 
practised sharp denials ; but I should not be surprised to 
hear you say that this was the happiest portion of your 
life. You and your family have been united in a closer 
and gentler sympathy ; you have found in one true and 
warm heart a love which was purer and stronger than 
ever ; your children have shown a considerate affection 
and care for you under your new burdens, which has 
made you proud and happy; they have all tasted the 
novel pleasure of foregoing personal preferences for the 
sake of comforting and aiding you ; you have preserved 
a good name — an untarnished honor ; and should you 
rise again to wealth and splendor, I am not sure but you 
will always look back to this season of trial as the one in 
which you gathered the richest harvest of love and sym- 
pathy and cheerfulness and contentment that ever you 
knew. 

If Hume and Voltaire, and Rousseau and Bentham — 
unmarried as they all were — had each been the father of 
a family ; if they had ever gone in person to summon 
the family-physician in some exigency of intense anxiety, 
we should never have heard of those frosty and infidel 
philosophies from their pens by which so many hearts 
have been chilled and cursed. As you entered the fam- 
ily-chamber, and bent over the couch hallowed by the 
" great mystery of birth," and the tears of high-wrought 



140 



Thanksgiving. 



sensibility could not be restrained as you caught the 
breath of your first-born, you discovered all at once that 
a new well had begun to spring up in your soul, deep and 
living beyond the reach of drouth. 

Sickness has come, and the time for watching, weari- 
ness, and prayer. That child, who had lived long enough 
to be the music and the light of your dwelling, twining 
itself around your living self, and associated with every 
hope and happiness of your life, is now in fearful peril. 
Its hot and hectic cheek lies against your own, as you 
pace the room in the dead of night, bearing it to and 
fro in its suffering and patience. In those hours of sus- 
pense and pain the seed is dropping fast for a future 
harvesting — if your child should live, in love and tender- 
ness and sympathy ; should it die, a bosom full of gentle 
memories and great thoughts, too great for words, cluster- 
ing about this one belief, that, should you act your part 
aright, you will meet in heaven a bright spirit who will 
call you father. I see in your dwelling a little coffin, and 
within it a form exquisitely moulded, the ringlets parted 
on its white and rounded forehead ; an unopened bud lies 
on its bosom, and were it not for that marble coldness, 
you might take it for a sleeping angel. And there you 
stand, the tears falling down your cheek, as the rain- 
drops drip from the boughs after a shower. Tell us, now, 
does the thought ever occur to you to wish that your 
child had never been given you ? Would you purchase 
exemption from all this grief at the price of forge tfulness ? 
Would you, if you could, overstep all this anguish, and be 
again as you were before that child had an existence ? 
Never. That brief scene of compressed sorrow is more 



The Blessedness of Tears. 141 

fruitful in all which belongs to a soul-harvest than a score 
of years passed in cold and polished prosperity ; and from 
that small grave you will reap many a sheaf of blended 
memories and hopes and gentle affections, every year, till 
you are yourself laid by its side. 

" The good are better made by ill, 
As odors crushed are sweeter still." 

It is said that one of the most distinguished senators 
of our country, who was bereaved of a little child, when 
his eye rested, months afterwards, on a small worsted shoe 
— recalling, as few things can more vividly, the bright 
vision which had fled — put it into his bosom, where, as 
was known, he carried it long next to his large and manly 
heart. That heart had a calmer pulse, a gentler sym- 
pathy, a richer sensibility, a truer greatness, because of 
contact with that small memorial of a domestic sorrow. 

There is an incident in the life of Edmund Burke, 
which is familiar to all who cherish his great fame. In 
the evening of public life he lost his only son, at the age 
of twenty-one, of the rarest genius and varied accom- 
plishments. The favorite horse of this young man, after 
the death of his master, was turned into the park and 
treated with the utmost tenderness. On a certain day 
long afterwards, when Mr. Burke himself was walking in 
the fields, this petted animal came up to the stile, and, as 
if in expression of his mute sympathy, put his head over 
the shoulder of the bereaved father. Struck with the 
singularity of the act, and overpowered with the memories 
which it awakened, he flung his arms around the neck of 



142 



the horse and burst into a flood of tears. The incident 
was observed by one passing by, and gave rise to the 
rumor that Mr. Burke had been smitten with sudden in- 
sanity. But never did the mind of that great statesman 
display a manlier quality • and when that sudden tear- 
flush had subsided into a calmer recollection, had you 
asked England's most philosophical orator for an analysis 
of that experience, and to give you the balance of sorrows 
and joys, he would have answered you in the words of 
England's laureate : 

" Better to have loved and lost, 
Than never to have loved at all." 

There are some persons who think it unkind to speak 
to the bereaved of their losses. Their mistaken art it is 
to console, by diverting the thoughts from all memory of 
that which occasioned pain. Judged by this policy, every 
allusion to a deceased friend would be an unwelcome 
intruder. What sciolists in the treatment of the human 
heart, are they who prescribe oblivion for its cure ! From 
such a sowing can come only a harvest of nettles and 
rankest weeds. Dam up the flow of tears by violent ob- 
struction, and the back-water will drown and desolate the 
soul. Let departed friends be welcomed back to your 
thoughts, for you cannot be happy unless you remember 
them ; and let your love for the lost make you more 
gentle, more tender, more affectionate, towards the liv- 
ing. 

I alluded, a short time back, to the poetic conceit of 
Mr. Moore, which represents a Peri gaining admission to 



The Blessedness of Tears. 1 43 



heaven, by bringing some gift esteemed by heaven most 
dear. And what was that ? 

First, she tried the sigh of expiring love, sacrificing 
itself for the good of another ; but the crystal bars moved 
not yet. Next she brought the last life-drop of a hero's 
blood, dying for freedom and his country ; but this did 
not avail. At last she spies a man, hard and haggard in 
sin. Crime had crimsoned his soul, and he had no hope, 
no joy. Across his path there passes a little child, inno- 
cent and glad • and at evening it kneels before his eyes 
in simple prayer. 

" And how felt he, that wretched man 
Reclining there — while memory ran 
O'er many a year of guilt and strife ? 

' There was a time,' he said, in mild, 
Heart-humbled tears — ' thou blessed child, 
When, young and happy, pure as thou, 
I looked and prayed like thee : but now ' — 
He hung his head : each nobler aim 
And hope and feeling which had slept 
From boyhood-hour, that instant came 
Fresh o'er him, and he wept — he wept ! 
Blest tears of soul-felt penitence ! 
In whose benign, redeeming flow, 
Is felt the first, the only sense 
Of guiltless joy that guilt can know. 

Heaven's choicest gift at last was found. Divest the 
rhythm of all that is fanciful and scenic in form, what is 
the residuum but that substantial truth which fell from 
the lips of the Son of God ? " Blessed are the poor in 
spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven ! " Let this 



144 



Thanksgiving. 



evangelic lesson be learned and practised by all, and we 
shall better comprehend on earth and in heaven these 
words of the Spirit : " They that sow in tears, shall reap in 
joy." Through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, peni- 
tential sensibility gives birth to peace, to the gladness of 
hope, joy unspeakable, and everlasting songs. 



CHEAP CONTENTMENT. 



He hath made every thing beautiful in his time. 

Eccl. 3:11. 



VII. 



CHEAP CONTENTMENT. 

Happiness depends more upon those things which 
are common to all than upon those which are the rare 
and signal property of the few. Those matters in which 
men differ from one another on the scale of social con- 
dition, are not half so important and valuable as those in 
which they agree. In regard to all which is substantial 
and needful for our good, it is certainly true, " the same 
Lord over all is rich unto all." 

Take the two extremes of life — infancy and age. It 
might strike the ear of some as a very questionable truth 
when we say, that it is altogether unnecessary to do any 
thing by way of making a little child happy. But care- 
ful observation will fully confirm the remark. Our bene- 
ficent Maker has abundantly provided for the happiness 
of children, and of all children alike ; and all that is 
needful on our part is to be careful to put no obstructions 
in their way. The brook needs no artificial aid to give 
motion and music to its waters ; throw no dam across it, 
and it will take care of itself, delighted with the freeness 
and swiftness of its running. No more does a young 
child need any expensive and solicitous thought for its 



148 



Thanksgiving. 



happiness. The first pleasures of the human infant are 
physical altogether, such as accompany the gratification 
of its animal appetites. Next to these, are the pleasures 
of the imagination, when the young child has attained 
sufficient growth to hold its toys, and dispose around it 
the materials of amusement, investing them with life, 
conversing with them, or soliloquizing among them, as 
if they were living personages. Always excepting those 
rare cases of extreme penury, happily so rare with us, 
when infant and adult life pine away in desperate famine, 
what possible difference can there be between one child 
and another, in palace or cottage, as to the amount of 
their physical enjoyment ? Parental fondness takes pride 
and pleasure in surrounding the occupants of a nursery 
with every object which itself may imagine to be neces- 
sary ; and so pleases itself by fancying that it is pleasing 
the object of its needless affluence. But what matters it 
to a child, of what rank in life, and of what quality of clay 
may be the person from whom it draws its sustenance, 
provided it find enough to satisfy its appetite ? Adult 
vanity may feel the difference to itself; but what differ- 
ence does it make to an infant-child, whether it be dressed 
in costly lace or linsey-woolsey, or is without any dress 
at all, if its tender surface feels that degree of warmth 
or coolness which is most agreeable ? If it be permitted 
to fall asleep just when it feels inclined, and sleep as 
long and soundly as it will, what does it care whether 
it swing on " a tree-top," heedless of a fall, or is rocked 
in a nautilus-shaped cradle, inlaid with pearl, with artistic 
forms of angels spreading their wings over its satin 
canopy ? The delight of motion, the pleasure of exercis- 



Cheap Contentment. 149 



ing their own limbs and organs, is an enjoyment which 
childhood shares with lambs scampering down the hill- 
side ; with birds, now mounting aloft, and now shoot- 
ing downwards. If this motion be only allowed them 
free and unmolested, of what concern is it to children 
whether they romp in a garret, a corn-barn, or on a 
velvet carpet, and within tapestried walls? At a very 
early age, children take delight in matings and com- 
panionships. Who ever observed among them any re- 
gard for the distinctions of rank and wealth, if left to 
themselves, unpoisoned by the suggestions of older pride ? 
In their overweening care of their first-born, parents 
do not discover — but discover it at length they do when 
observation has grown calmer and wiser — that it is alto- 
gether superfluous to purchase expensive toys, and take 
pains to invent amusement for young children. The only 
value of a toy is to help that earliest of the faculties, the 
imagination, in its pleasant and playful creations. For 
the pleasure of infantine architecture, a few corn-cobs, 
and as many small blocks, which never cost a penny, will 
do as good a service, and confer as much real satisfac- 
tion, as costly devices of ivory and sandal- wood ; and for 
all the play and pleasure of imaginary maternity, while, 
as yet, the young child is in the honest simplicity of na- 
ture, untouched by the artificial lessons of pride, a doll 
constructed of rags and charcoal will excite every whit 
as much of happy prattle, and accomplish as kindly a 
service, on the bare boards of the poor man's cottage, as 
the costlier fabric of wax and porcelain in the carpeted 
nursery of the rich ; and a country-boy, nestling down on 
the warm side of a shed, " digging his Lilliputian well, 



ISO 



Thanksgiving. 



and fencing in his six-inch barn-yard," will find a serener 
delight than his metropolitan contemporary, whom afflu- 
ent indulgence is overburdening with the entertainments 
and pastimes of expensive art. Never was there a vainer, 
a more useless thing, than to labor to make a young 
child happy. Kind nature has provided for all alike at 
that period, if you will not unnecessarily obstruct their 
innocent freedom, nor throw your shadow in the way of 
their sunshine. Study to supply them with means of hap- 
piness, and in manifold instances you will only defeat 
your own intention, kindling up an unnatural craving, a 
querulousness, and dissatisfaction, which is the greatest 
of curses which wealth can inflict on the tender nature of 
childhood. 

Pass now to the opposite extreme of life — to old age — 
and you will observe that what is most essential to its 
comfort is common to all who have reached its dignified 
tranquillity. In the words of Dr. Paley, " it is not for youth 
alone that the great Parent of creation hath provided. 
Happiness is found with the purring cat, no less than with 
the playful kitten ; in the arm-chair of dozing age as 
well as in the sprightliness and animation of youthful re- 
creations. To novelty, to acuteness of sensation, to hope, 
to ardor of pursuit, succeeds what is, in no inconsider- 
able degree, an equivalent for them all, ' perception of 
ease.' Herein is the exact difference between the young 
and the old : the young are happy when enjoying pleas- 
ure ; the old are happy when free from pain. The vigor 
of youth is stimulated to action by impatience of rest ; 
whilst to the imbecility of age, quietness and repose 
become positive gratifications. In one important re- 



Cheap Contentment. 151 

spect the advantage is with the old. A state of ease is, 
generally speaking, more attainable than a state of pleas- 
ure. A constitution, therefore, which can enjoy ease, is 
preferable to that which can taste only pleasure. This 
same perception of ease oftentimes renders old age a 
condition of great comfort, especially when riding at 
its anchor after a busy and tempestuous life. It is well 
described by Rousseau to be the interval of repose and 
enjoyment between the hurry and the end of life." Do 
not imagine that wealth ministers to the happiness of 
age, by putting at its disposal excitements and luxuries. 
It needs not brilliancy, but prefers the softer shade. 
Noisy mirth, the revel, and the dance, are distasteful to 
one who asks for nothing but tranquil rest. Expensive 
journeyings, voyages, and spectacles, so attractive to the 
young, have no charms for those who desire only to be 
still. Desires have failed, the daughters of music are 
brought low ; and could your affluence command all the 
sources of delight which were the ambition of younger 
life, when the passions were impetuous and the pulses 
strong, you could not give one moment's happiness to 
those who have reached the period of life when they 
need nothing for their happiness but to be freed from all 
physical and mental pain, and left to their long-sought 
and undisturbed repose. An unspeakable pleasure and 
privilege it is when filial gratitude is permitted to minister 
to parental infirmity and age ; but expensive, over-careful 
and officious kindness to such, is far more pleasant to 
those who give, than it is necessary to those who receive it ; 
for their wants are few and simple, within the reach of the 
humble as the opulent ; and as it was with infancy, so is 



152 



Thanksgiving. 



it with age : if you will but avoid putting obstacles and 
obstructions in its way, our Creator hath provided for its 
cheap and common contentment. 

I have spoken of a community of blessings at differ- 
ent ages of life. Let us look at differences of condition. 
The chief necessities of cur nature are very few, and 
very soon and easily supplied. The healthful appetites 
of the body are common to all. If these are satisfied, 
wherein lies the advantage of affluence over mediocrity ? 
The true limit is in our nature, not in our means. The 
appetite demands a certain supply; if a poor man ac- 
complishes this, what more than this can be accomplish- 
ed by the rich ? If one's appetites were multiplied in pro- 
portion to his means of gratifying them ; if his capacity 
for eating and drinking was enlarged, in some correspond- 
ence to his ability to provide viands and beverages ; if 
his power to sleep, for the length of its indulgence or the 
sweetness of its oblivion, were graduated by the number 
and quality of the beds his wealth could purchase ; if 
his various organs and senses acquired sensibility just 
as fast as he acquired the means of expending for their 
gratification ; if the sense of comfort in the use of rai- 
ment were in any degree proportioned to his power of 
buying every species of wearing apparel by the bale or 
cargo • if the retina of the eye were expanded, in equal 
degree with the enlargement of one's ability to pay for 
all objects of beauty, and the tympanum of the ear gather- 
ed to itself new faculties of perception and enjoyment 
just as fast as its possessor accumulated around him the 
wealth of music ; if all this were true, then might we see 
the prodigious advantage of the rich over the poor, in the 



Cheap Contentment. 153 

materials of physical enjoyments. But there is nothing 
like this in the dispensations of Providence. The length 
of one's purse cannot add one inch to his stature, nor one 
capacity to his organs; the plethora of his check-book gives 
no enlargement to limb, sense, or faculty. In all but 
the imaginary appetites of our physical nature, there is 
an absolute equality among all. We cannot transcend the 
capacities of our constitution. Build and own as many 
palaces as did Solomon, by a law of your nature you can- 
not be in more than one place at a time ; purchase as 
many horses as ever stood in stalls of cedar, in the sta- 
bles of any monarch, so long as you are a man, and not a 
monster, you can bestride only one at once. Should as 
many cup-bearers as stood before Persian thrones of gold 
wait on your thirst, and as many oxen and sheep load your 
tables as were daily served in ancient palaces, and as many 
beds of ivory, with sounds of adjacent fountains lulling 
to repose, as ever were seen in Aladdin's Dream, and as 
many garments of silk and wool and needle-work as 
make up the wardrobe of an oriental prince, you could 
neither eat, nor drink, nor sleep, nor wear one whit more 
than the common faculties and appetites of our nature 
require for your comfort. Strive to exceed these, and 
punitive reaction will prove your folly. Strive to surpass 
the ordinary bounds of nature, and the keen relish of health 
departs, enjoyment is turned into loathing ; excess ex- 
acts its penalty, and you are thrown back upon the wise 
equalities of nature, convinced that with these you can 
never trifle without doing yourself a mischief. The 
sleep of the laboring man is sweet. Vigorous is the 
relish with which he eats the bread of industry. Fortu- 
7* 



1 54 Thanksgiving. 



nate are the affluent if they can boast as much. They 
can certainly boast of nothing more. Just here, on this 
cheap and common ground, the wisdom of Inspiration 
puts the limit of physical good. " Hast thou found ho- 
ney ? eat so much as is sufficient for thee." The expe- 
rience of any child will tell you what will be the conse- 
quences of repletion beyond sufficiency. 

Travellers in the deserts of the East are often de- 
ceived by the mirage, that singular reflection of earth and 
sky, which assumes the appearance of inviting waters. 
No sooner have they reached the place of that welcome 
vision, than they find it sand instead of water ; and sur- 
prised are they, when turning round upon the path which 
they have already trodden, to see in the horizon they 
have left behind them the same illusive spectacle — the 
vision of water now, where, a short time before, they 
found nothing but sand. Just so it is in the pilgrimage 
of life. There is a mirage before us and another behind 
us ; but all the water we shall find in the desert is that 
we carry along with us day by day. The place where 
we now are is the very one which was once overhung 
with the mirrored promise of satisfaction ; we have reach- 
ed the spot, the illusion changes, and we now are filled 
with regret because we did not see the streams and the 
lakes which lay along the path which we have already 
traversed. The enjoyments of life are to be found in 
our present condition and occupations ; and the wells 
from which we drink must be dug day by day where we 
pitch our tabernacle. Taking life just as it is, at this 
our present time, we must extract the true elixir of con- 
tentment from its common realities. Vastly are we to be 



Cheap Contentment. 155 



commiserated if we are always to be the sport of illusive 
hope and illusive regrets ; not having learned as yet how 
the very sands on which we tread may become grateful 
as the greensward to our feet, in the march of duty and 
the offices of affection. How much I should be privi- 
leged to do for the happiness of the reader, if I could suc- 
ceed in fairly lodging the conviction in his mind, that 
this succession of work and rest, care and relaxation, 
duty and sorrow, which compose the substance of our 
every-day life, this is the material, the common sand, 
dirt and rubbish, out of which we must gather all the par- 
ticles of true gold, which constitute the ordinary means 
of our enjoyment in this earthly life. 

A young couple commence their married life in hum- 
ble mediocrity. No wealthy parents have enriched them 
with dowry or inheritance. No influential friends furnish 
them with facility, or help, or promise. Self-reliant, they 
are to depend upon their own industry, judgment, and 
patience. Nothing have they but their own minds and 
hands, and they work on. Busy temptation may whisper 
in their ears, that theirs is a life of thankless and ignoble 
drudgery. The mirage begins to gleam in the false fu- 
ture. Drive away that serpent falsehood, which will poi- 
son your peace. Work is not your bane, but your bless- 
ing. You know not now how much you owe to the neces- 
sity of that daily toil which you are tempted to hate and 
despise. Work on, and find now in honest industry and 
frugal living, and your own earnings, cheerfulness, con- 
tentment, health of body and mind. Certain it is, should 
success crown your exertions, and affluence be your fu- 
ture lot, that from days of listless leisure and splendid 



i S 6 



Thanksgiving, 



tedium, you will look back to this early toil, and wonder 
why you were not more happy under its sober blessing. 

A classical writer of our times, describing the popula- 
tion of ancient Rome, all its rank and fashion and pride 
assembled in the Flavian Amphitheatre, as spectators of 
imperial shows, has ventured to ask whether it was pro- 
bable that the elegant Fulvia, then and there present, 
ever thought of telling the happy news to her friend 
Lucretia that her baby had that day actually cut a tooth ! 
The implication is, that mothers who took delight in the 
gladiatorial exhibitions of the Coliseum, had reached that 
degree of splendid misery in which they had entirely 
outlived all taste and pleasure for the simple humanities 
of home. Hope and memory both may stand aside 
awhile : all that is great and magnificent in the world 
may withdraw for a season from the visions of the hum- 
ble pair whose fortunes we are following, for all the world 
to them is that first-born, which has filled their home 
with wonder and gladness. Smile not at their simple 
happiness. What new thoughts and affections spring 
into life • what memories of the babe of Bethlehem form 
a halo of light around that small cradle, with which their 
home is honored ; what discoveries, what surprises, what 
pleasures, what imaginations, what delights, are associated 
with the common, every-day, and simple incidents of that 
first infant's life ; and the time, unhappily, may come in 
later years, when those very parents will admit that some 
discovery, some achievement, or good-fortune of theirs 
which the world admires, has actually caused less con- 
gratulation, led to less remark, and produced in them 
less of satisfaction, than when, in simpler days, they 



Cheap Contentment. 



J 57 



discovered that their first-born child had achieved the 
wondrous act of cutting a tooth. Be contented and 
happy now. Lay hold of the " fleet angel of opportu- 
nity " who has entered your dwelling, and suffer her not 
to go till she has filled your heart with blessings. 

Now come days of trial and fear. Adversity throws 
her sombre shadow over that humble home. Sickness 
comes, and there are long and weary watchings at the 
bedside. Is not the mirage of remembrance or delusive 
hope a blessing now to the thirsty soul ? Ah ! you know 
not what deep wells of love are dug by the sharp tools 
of solicitude and pain. Draw water now, and drink. 
More blessed are ye in mutual trust, in mutual depend- 
ence, in all the ministries and offices of kindness, than if 
sickness had never been known ; and times of what the 
world calls prosperity may yet ensue, when the only way 
in which the hard heart can be softened, and filled up 
with blessedness, will be to recall the very season through 
which you are now passing — the hours of watching you 
have had by one another, and by your children, when 
your whole soul was suffused with tenderness. 

Then came disappointments and disasters ; the little 
fortune was wrecked, and business was deranged, and 
means of subsistence were few and precarious. They 
have gone down hand in hand into a low valley, and 
sometimes they are ready to despond and fear, as un- 
looked-for shadows settle around them. But these are 
times of heroism and fortitude, when the brave spirit 
learns to dispense with what was once thought to be ne- 
cessary, and so it rejoices in its own independence : now 
is the time for self-denials, the foregoing of little pleasures 



i 5 8 



Thanksgiving. 



for another's help, of manly strugglings together for a 
livelihood, of frugal spendings, of careful savings ; what 
you purchase, what you earn now, has a value which can- 
not be computed in coinage. Now is the harvest-time of 
patience and trust and courage ; be strong, and use your 
sickle well ; fill your bosom with the sheaves of cheap 
yet priceless enjoyments, for no plenty of the past or the 
future hath been, nor will be, so rich in dear and precious 
memories as this very season of trouble, in which folly 
might tempt you to be discontented. 

I will not hesitate to advance into darker shades. 
We have reached that stage in the journey where death 
becomes a visitant in the dwelling. His cold shadow 
falls on that bright and happy child, and a whole house- 
hold shivers under its chill. From that shadow they 
cannot pass as yet. It seems at first, when that dar- 
ling head had drooped, and that fair face was overspread 
with pallor, and death had actually taken your child 
away, that your heart would burst from its prison to fol- 
low him. But meek blessings come in the train of sor- 
row. Be not afraid of the darkness — for the night shall be 
light about you. Springs of blessedness will come now 
to the surface, of whose existence you had never before 
dreamed. You are passing through an experience now 
in which you are laying up memories, hopes, and affec- 
tions for all your future being. The child that died out 
of your bosom is lost to the world, as if it were no more 
than one blossom of the Spring. But it will never be lost 
to you. How often, in visions of day and night, is that 
bright and laughing countenance turned on you, as if it 
had been the face of an angel. What an unspeakable 



Cheap Contentment. 159 



tenderness will that memory impart whenever you look 
upon living children, your own, or those who are poor 
and neglected. When your eye falls upon children who 
are happy, it will not be envious of their life, for the life 
of the one who was taken is safer and happier than 
theirs ; and when you see or hear of those who have fal- 
len into suffering and shame, you will have a kindly and 
compassionate feeling for them ; for so might it have been 
with yours, but for the safety and glory of its translation. 
There were no giving of thanks with many, if there were 
not some way of being happy in sorrow. Blessed are 
they that mourn. Wait not for future healing, but be 
calm and blessed, as you are. 

Count it not presumptuous if we should dare to speak 
of their separation, whose united life we have traced so far. 
The blow has fallen, and one of the twain is left alone. 
The future has no mirage now, nothing but embank- 
ments of cloud ; the past alone is bright. Shall the lonely 
pilgrim travel back, expecting to find and realize again 
the vision which has vanished ? Not so. He must find 
a present and immediate good, or he will perish. He 
cannot be deluded by any thing before or behind him. 
His feet are planted by the grave-side, and his eyes are 
turned upward. Strength has come, and the bereaved 
can be cheerful still. The widow or the deserted one, 
in that widowhood which is worst of all, pressed by kind- 
ly necessity, is surprised at her own preternatural resolu- 
tion and heroism. Powers and faculties are developed 
within her, whose existence never before had been sus- 
pected. Thrown off from the supports to which it had 
clung before, the frail vine has shot out into a strong 



i6o 



Thanksgiving. 



and elastic stem. Sympathy, honor, admiration, and 
rewards around her, gratitude and peace are within 
her. Though she cannot anticipate the supply of her 
wants in the future journey of life, yet the rock affords its 
drink, and the dry sand is overspread with manna, 
and, as she journeys on, that heavy body of clouds 
which overhung the future begins to brighten, and 
because of trouble and anguish of spirit, the be- 
reaved rejoices in hope, and the weary looks forward to 
her rest. 

What a hard, cold, cheerless, hopeless thing the hu- 
man heart would be, if bereft of all recollections of past 
losses, griefs, and sufferings. The philosophy of the 
world is quite the reverse of this. When it would pre- 
scribe for our happiness, it interdicts any allusion to 
past occurrences which are painful. But when religion 
would deepen and purify our blessedness, it bids us 
remember all, not excepting even wrong and outrage ; 
for, if these be forgotten, where were forgiveness and 
tenderness and compassion ? and if memory be absent, 
where can gratitude be found ? Come back, ye visions 
of the past : childhood, removed now so far — our first 
and earliest home — ours no longer, save in remem- 
brance ; follies, mistakes, sicknesses, deliverances, strug- 
gles, losses, bereavements, come back, and help us to be 
meek, quiet, tender, and grateful. Come back, ye long- 
mourned, departed ones. Our homes and our hearts 
would be desolate enough, if there were no remembrance 
of you ; father, mother, husband, wife, brother, sister, 
child, years have gone since you left us ; we have never 
forgotten you, and the thought of what you were to us 



Cheap Contentment. 



161 



soothes us into a special tenderness and affectionateness 
towards friends who survive. 

Tire not yourself with what the old philosopher has 
called the "histrionism of happiness." There is nothing 
more empty of rewards than affectation. How many are 
downright sick and weary with show, brilliancy, and splen- 
dor. It is grateful to the eye sometimes to look on what 
is plain and homely ; to relieve that organ, strained, 
bleared, and blinded by long gazing on high-wrought 
colors, by turning it to the sober shades of common life. 
The problem given us to solve — nay, it has been solved 
for us— the lesson given us to practise, is : to be happy, 

TAKING LIFE JUST AS IT IS. 

When we speak of the Gospel of Christ as the 
charm and coronation of all mercies, this is its highest 
glory — it is accessible and free to all alike. " Beloved," 
says the Apostle Jude, " I write to you of the Common 
Salvation." So cheap are the conditions of its inval- 
uable gifts, that they are absolutely " without money and 
without price." Jesus of Nazareth sat down to meat 
in the cottage at Bethany as well as at the table of 
Simon and Zaccheus, the rich men of their day. So 
kindly and impartial are His visits still. 



BALANCINGS AND COMPENSATIONS. 



Now Naaman was a great man with his master, and honourable : 
he was also a mighty man in valour, but he was a leper. 

2 Kings 5 : 1. 



VIII. 



BALANCINGS AND COMPENSATIONS. 

Saadi, the Persian Poet, whose words breathe a wis- 
dom and kindliness not unlike those of Inspiration, in- 
forms us that he never complained of his condition but 
once — when his feet were bare, and he had no money to 
buy shoes ; but, meeting with a man without feet, he in- 
stantly became contented with his lot. 

The world is full of these strange balancings and 
compensations. It is essential to our happiness that we 
take them into account. 

We enter the city of Damascus in its palmiest days 
of ancient splendor. Lying on the high-road, along 
which passed the caravans of India, distinguished for the 
beauty of its position, its natural advantages, begirt by 
gardens of the richest fertility, watered by sparkling 
streams flowing from Lebanon ; there was a time when it 
deserved the title which it formerly bore among the Ori- 
entals — " a pearl set in emeralds." In the days of 
Benhadad, Damascus was the metropolis of a very power- 
ful empire ■ for we read that "thirty and two kings " — 
pachas,, as they would now be called — accompanied their 
monarch in one of the campaigns which he undertook 



Thanksgiving. 



against Samaria. Entering this city, the seat of arms, 
commerce, and wealth, walking along the principal street, 
full of the pride of life, our eye is arrested by an equipage 
of unusual pretensions. The man whom it bears along 
attracts universal regard and admiration. He is the 
"observed of all observers." Inquiring who he can be, 
we learn that he is the chief favorite of the king, the cap- 
tain of his armies, by whose valor the country had 
achieved splendid victories, and a proud deliverance 
from her enemies. This is Naaman, a great man with 
his master, and honorable, and no man in the land can 
vie with him in rank, wealth, or honors. How many 
envy him. All eyes follow him, as prancing steeds bear 
him along, in a perpetual ovation. " But he was a 
leper." Under all that splendid show, which made him 
the admiration of a throng, beneath that embroidered 
tunic, eating into his flesh, was an incurable and 
loathsome disease, which, had it been known, would 
have prevented the meanest man in Syria from exchang- 
ing places with him. Had he been in Israel, his leprosy 
would have disqualified him for all public appointments. 
Afflicted with no such civil disabilities in Syria, with all 
distinctions and honors, regarded, so far as office and 
rank and emolument were concerned, as the most favored 
of men, nevertheless he was subject to one of the sorest 
of all calamities, so that life was a burden to him. 

The reader already catches the drift of my theme — 
perceiving that a small conjunction may serve as a nail 
on which to hang many important suggestions in regard 
to the estimate we should form of human condition. 
Most men are perpetually misled by appearances. They 



Balancings and Compensations. 167 

conclude that he is the most blessed who is in possession 
of those things which they themselves desire and have 
not. They leave out of the calculation the counter- 
weight and the drawback, forgetting that he whom they 
envy is wanting in some other object which they possess, 
or is afflicted with some form of suffering from which 
they are altogether exempt. This is a fact too true and 
too weighty to be overlooked. The writer will not be 
suspected of any thing morbid or misanthropic if he gives 
this fact a more expanded statement. There is a " but " 
in every man's life. There is some subtraction to be 
made from the sum-total of his condition. There is 
some alloy in the metal, some one thing which he could 
wish were other than it is, and which is the secret 
weight that a wise Providence has attached to the clock- 
work of life, the index-finger of which revolves on a dial 
of enamel and figures of gold. You are deceived and 
made unhappy if you do not take into account, along 
with all which you admire and covet in the condition of 
another, just that one subtraction which is suggested by 
this little, surly, evasive conjunction, but. Here is a man 
of extensive business, of great prosperity, of abundant 
wealth, but cankering care has so corroded into his life, 
he can neither eat nor sleep in comfort. Here is a man- 
sion which attracts attention by its costliness and ele- 
gance, sumptuous furniture, works of art ; bid some secret 
domestic sorrow throws all that splendor into shadow. 
Parents live, and are in possession of such means as 
enable them to give their children every thing ; but all 
that they could give them was a grave. Jacob survives ; 
but Joseph is not, and Benjamin is taken away ; so that 



i68 



Thanksgiving. 



his gray head droopeth with sorrow towards the ground. 
One retains his property, but his character is sus- 
pected. Another rejoices in a good name, which never 
suffered a lesion or a stain, but he is distressed as 
to the means of subsistence. After years of strugglings, 
care, and toil, one reaches the fullest success in his 
profession ; but those who had been the charm and 
the motive of life are gone, and he is alone. David 
ascends the throne of Israel amid regal honors and 
affluence ; but how many cares and distractions had he 
in his home and his kingdom. Abraham was honored 
with the friendship of God ; but he had Ishmael for a 
son, in whose behalf he wept and prayed without com- 
fort. Abigail is included in the roll of the saints for her 
sweetness and affectionateness ; but she had Nabal, a 
churl, for her husband. Paul gleams high among the 
children of men, as the chief of the Christian apostles ; 
but he had a thorn in the flesh, which pierced him for 
years, and which he prayed might be taken away. George 
Herbert united in himself as many qualities of ancestral 
wealth, serene piety, placid disposition, and poetic 
genius, as were ever united in any Christian minis- 
ter ; but he had an infidel brother, the leader of the 
English deists. The suffrages of the world, to-day, would 
place the name of John Milton, for the nobility of his 
soul, his love of liberty, his sublimity of genius, in the 
highest niche of human fame ; but Milton was blind — 
Milton was poor. The whole human race admires the 
boundless philanthropy of Howard, judging that the 
measure of his blessedness was full because he was full 
of pity and love ; but he had a dissolute son, who died 



Balancings and Compensations. 169 

in a mad-house. You would find it difficult to fix upon 
another name which gathers to itself more of honor, as 
time rolls on, for varied qualities in science, philosophy, 
and religion, than Blaize Pascal ; but all his life he 
waged incessant conflict with fiercest pain, which, at the 
early age of thirty-seven, mastered and ended his earthly 
life. Many listened to the magnificent eloquence of 
Robert Hall, and many now peruse his books with de- 
light, who knew not that these were prepared amid suf- 
ferings of body and mind which twice deprived him of 
reason, and which for years rendered life well-nigh intol- 
erable. The author of the Task presents as many 
claims to esteem and love, both for talent and virtue, as 
any man that could be named ; but William Cowper was 
subject to that most cruel of all calamities incident to 
humanity, insane melancholy. Look at William Pitt: 
a prodigy of success ; at twenty-three years of age the 
Prime Minister of England ; at twenty-eight, occupying 
a position in the honors of his country, in popular 
enthusiasm, because of his eloquence, his power, his 
acknowledged authority in administering the govern- 
ment of a great kingdom, without precedent or par- 
allel ; but so annoyed by political rivalries and coali- 
tions, and so alarmed because of new and terrible exi- 
gencies arising out of the revolutions of the Continent, 
that sleep and appetite forsook him, and a broken heart 
laid him in Westminster Abbey at the early age of forty- 
seven. A distinguished jurist in this country once wrote 
to William Wirt, when in the zenith of his fame, congrat- 
ulating him on some particular honor or success which 
he had just acquired. He was surprised by the reply 
8 



170 



Thanksgiving. 



which he received from that fascinating man. " I have 
no taste for worldly business. I go to it reluctantly. 
I dread the world, the strife and emulation of the bar ; 
but I will do my duty ; that is my religion." The world 
had forgotten the event which had left an incurable sor- 
row in his heart, — the death, years before, of a daughter, 
whom he thus describes : " She was my companion, my 
office-companion, my librarian, my clerk. My papers 
now bear her indorsement. She pursued her studies in 
my office, by my side, sat with me, walked with me, was 
my inexpressibly sweet and inseparable companion. We 
knew all her intelligence, all her pure and delicate sen- 
sibility, the quickness and power of her perceptions, 
her seraphic love. She was all love, and loved all God's 
creation, even the animals, trees, and plants. She loved 
her God and Saviour with an angel-love, and died like a 
saint." The arrow which felled her passed also through a 
larger and nobler frame, which never rallied from the hurt. 

It is needless to multiply examples. These are 
not extraordinary exceptions, but instances of a common 
experience. There never was one upon the earth, who, 
however prospered, had not his own weight and damper. 
You see those who are exempt from the afflictions 
which are the most severe in your own case, and therefore 
conclude that they are the most fortunate of men ; for- 
getting, meanwhile, that they are subject to some other 
form of trouble, of which, happily, you know nothing at 
all. It may be secret, as the leprosy which was hid 
beneath the sleeve of Naaman ; or as palpable as any 
calamity which ever invoked public commiseration. 

A truthful estimate can be reached only by the bal- 



Balancings and Compensations. 171 

anting of advantages and disadvantages. On many 
accounts one is to be congratulated. In many respects 
you are prospered, but — but, . . " The heart knoweth 
its own bitterness." There is the recent grief, or, what 
is often forgotten by others, the memory and the scar 
of a former affliction, which never is forgotten by the 
heart itself. There is some secret solicitude, some deep- 
seated care, some painful apprehension, some invisible 
thorn, never suspected outside of the privacy of home, 
or rankling unconfessed in the silence of a troubled 
heart. Naaman was a great captain, high and honorable, 
hit he was a leper. 

Here is a fact in the arithmetic of life too important 
to be left out of the computation. We must not look 
at our own troubles through a magnifying glass. It 
is better to consider them as our own, suited, in their 
nature, to ourselves by a Power wiser than we. This, 
and not another, is to be construed as our own pecu- 
liar property. That which is a trial to one, would be 
regarded as no trial at all by another. Jacob wrestled 
with the angel most sturdily and manfully ; nor was it 
till the finger of his antagonist touched a particular 
sinew, that his strength faltered. Achilles was invulner- 
able in every part but one ; that one was discovered, 
and wounded. Oftentimes men are so constituted that 
there is only one place in which a wound can be inflicted. 
The arrow finds it before the battle of life is over. Noth- 
ing else could ever have given them a pang. This may 
be deferred for a long time, but sooner or later it comes. 
And this must be considered as belonging to us, and so 
to be borne with equanimity and patience. It is this 



172 



Thanksgiving. 



thought which cures all envy of others, and every desire 
to exchange conditions with them. If such a thing were 
possible, we should be the first, most probably, to regret 
it. This idea has been elaborated, with great force, by 
several authors, ancient and modern. It was thought by 
Socrates that if mankind could throw all their miseries 
into a common stock, and then make a choice out of the 
whole heap, each would go away with a larger amount of 
suffering and discontent than now attend the inflictions 
which are appointed to each by Supreme Power. The 
same idea is expanded by Horace in one of the most 
celebrated of his odes. Addison, in one of the numbers 
of the Spectator, has constructed a very ingenious fable 
out of the same conception, for which he confessed him- 
self indebted to those writers of antiquity. The dream 
took a form somewhat like this : A proclamation from 
Jupiter, that mortals might lay down all their griefs and 
calamities, and then each was to choose out of the heap, 
that which he preferred as being lighter and comelier than 
his own. A vast plain was selected for the purpose ; and, 
as the whole race threw down their pains, their deformi- 
ties, and their burdens, the mass grew to a prodigious 
size, reaching like a mountain to the skies. What a 
sense of relief, what an exuberant gladness, was there, 
upon this singular occasion ; every one permitted to make 
choice out of this immense heap of any trouble, which he 
should exchange for his own. How soon that satisfac- 
tion gave place to a most bitter sorrow ! Not one ex- 
change was made for the better. A venerable, gray- 
headed man, who had been greatly afflicted for want of 
an heir to his estate, immediately seized as his choice a 



Balancings and Compensations. 173 



son, who, because he was undutiful, had been thrown 
upon the mass by a disappointed and disconsolate father. 
The graceless fellow soon made such exhibition of his 
violent temper, his low and vulgar passions, that his new 
father would gladly have receded from his choice as a 
positive relief. In short, this futile attempt to exchange 
burdens and maladies was the occasion of so many mur- 
murs and complaints, groans and lamentations, that the 
Throne was petitioned that the old order of things might 
be restored, even that mortals might be permitted, a 
second time, to lay down their loads, and each one to 
take up that which was his own again. 

It was a touching answer given to the question, pro- 
posed at an exhibition of deaf mutes — " Which would 
you prefer — to be blind, or deaf and dumb ?" The sylph- 
like form to whom the question, with doubtful delicacy, had 
been put, immediately wrote upon the slate these words : 
" Even so, Father, for so it seemeth good in Thy sight." 

Before we can dream of exchanging conditions with 
any mortals, we must be sure that we know not only what 
we are to gain, but as well also what we shall lose. If life 
is justly described as a barter of objects, before we give 
way to envy of any man's possessions, we should ascer- 
tain the price at which he has purchased them. This 
idea was elaborated ages ago by Epictetus in an argument 
which Mrs. Barbauld has paraphrased in one of her admi- 
rable essays. " We should consider this world as a great 
mart of commerce where fortune exposes to our view 
various commodities, riches, ease, tranquillity, fame, in- 
tegrity, knowledge. Every thing is marked at a settled 
price. Our time, our labor, our ingenuity, are so much 



1 74 Thanksgiving. 



ready money which we are to lay out to the best advan- 
tage. Examine, compare, choose, reject ; but stand to 
your own judgment : and do not, like children, when you 
have purchased one thing, repine that you do not possess 
another which you did not purchase. Would you, for 
instance, be rich ? Do you think that single point worth 
the sacrifici?ig every thing else to ? You may then be rich. 
Thousands have become so from the lowest beginnings, 
by toil, and patient diligence, and attention to the minutest 
articles of expense and profit. But you must give up the 
pleasures of leisure, of a vacant mind, of a free, unsuspi- 
cious temper. If you preserve your integrity, it must 
be a coarse-spun and vulgar honesty. Those high and 
lofty notions of morals which you brought with you from 
the schools must be considerably lowered and mixed 
with the baser alloy of a jealous and worldly-minded 
prudence. You must learn to do hard, if not unjust 
things ; and for the nice embarrassments of a delicate 
and ingenuous spirit, it is necessary for you to get rid of 
them as fast as possible. You must shut your heart 
against the Muses, and be content to feed your under- 
standing with plain household truths. In short, you must 
not attempt to enlarge your ideas or polish your taste, or 
refine your sentiments ; but must keep on in one beaten, 
track, without turning aside either to the right hand or 
to the left. ' But I cannot submit to drudgery like this — 
I feel a spirit above it.' 'Tis well : be above it, then ; only 
do not repine that you are not rich. ' But is it not some 
reproach upon the economy of Providence that such a one, 
who is a mean, ignorant fellow, should have amassed such 
wealth ? ' Not in the least. He has paid his health, his 



Balancings and Compensations. 175 

conscience, his liberty, for it ; and will you envy him his 
bargain because he outshines you in equipage and show ? 
Lift up your brow with a noble confidence, and say to 
yourself, ' I have not these things, it is true ; but it is 
because I possess something better. I have chosen my 
lot. I am content and satisfied.' The substance of this 
philosophy is well expressed by Pope in his Essay on 
Man : 

Bring, then, these blessings to a strict account ; 
Make fair deductions : — see to what they mount ; 
How much of other each is sure to cost ; 
How each for other oft is wholly lost ; 
How inconsistent greater goods with these ; 
How sometimes life is risked — and always ease. 
Think ; and if still the things thy envy call, 
Say — vvouldst thou be the man to whom they fall ? 

But this is only one aspect of a great subject. To be 
cured of envy is one thing. This may be accomplished 
by the process now described, and most portentous 
mistakes still be made in the estimate of life. 

Sometimes the eye, glancing over a newspaper, is 
caught by a glaring and pretentious advertisement of 
an infallible medicine. Some one claims to have travelled 
in foreign parts — to have been initiated into some great 
secret of nature, which promises a certain relief for all the 
most formidable maladies incident to humanity. For a 
consideration, he will communicate it to others. Now 
there is one real panacea for all the griefs to which 
mortals are subject. It may be obtained without money 
and without price. It is a prescription which will never 



176 



fail to impart a genial warmth and comfort to the most 
prostrate and exhausted spirit. 

In an algebraic calculation, it is of great consequence 
where and how your signs and quantities are placed. It 
makes the greatest difference in the result whether certain 
figures are used as items of subtraction or items of addition. 
We have seen how this particle " but " may be used to de- 
note the diversified amounts which are to be subtracted 
from the sum-total of individual happiness. Now the very 
same word may be used, after another method, to denote 
the several items of cheer and contentment, on the other 
side of the equation, which should be added to the estimate 
of our condition. All the difference in the world does it 
make whether your " but " be regarded as a plus or a minus 
quantity ; whether you use it to denote the diminution or 
the increase of your possessions. Now, the cheap but 
invaluable prescription for personal happiness may be 
expressed in this laconic form. Let every one estimate 
himself at the very lowest stage of demerit, and then use 
his "but" to measure off his ascending and accumulating 
mercies. Instead of beginning at the top, the pinnacle of 
success and prosperity, and proceeding to lessen one's 
happiness by what you are forced to take away, begin at 
the opposite extreme, at the very nadir of one's demerits, 
and then let every item of God's goodness be a stepping- 
stone by which you shall rise into a joyful gratitude. The 
process might describe itself by soliloquizing after this 
method : ' I am without many things which I could 
desire, but I have a thousand mercies beyond what I de- 
serve. I am the man that has seen afflictions, but I am 
alive, and am not delivered over to the pains of eternal 



Balancings and Compensations. 177 

death. Troubles are on every side, but I am not in 
despair. Many things come to pass otherwise than I 
could wish, but the Lord hath not dealt with me after 
my sins, nor rewarded me according to my iniquities. 
Am I in danger of discomposure and envy when I see 
the prosperity of such as are never in trouble as other 
men? but, God be thanked, I am not with those who 
have died in their sins, and made their bed in sorrow. I 
have been disappointed in many a hope and confidence ; 
but, in this will I rejoice, God is the strength of my 
heart and my portion forever. I have met with losses ; 
but there is a Gospel which promises me what never can 
be taken away. I am poor as Lazarus — as 'lonely, dis- 
eased, and forlorn as he ; but I have hope in the Re- 
deemer. My body is infirm and racked with pain ; but 
my soul has life and strength and joy in God. I miss 
the society of many a friend who once was my solace 
and associate ; but I have many of increased kindness 
and tenderness who remain. Had troubles rolled over 
me like the waves of the sea, I could not complain ; but 
here I am — the mercies of heaven crowning my life, and 
the portals of the celestial city inviting my entrance. I 
am a widow ; but my Maker is my husband. I am an 
orphan ; but God is my father. I am childless, and my 
tabernacle is spoiled ; but how much better to have sons 
and daughters in the skies, than to have Ishmaels and 
Absaloms to pierce the heart with what is sharper than 
a serpent's tooth. I have lost many a noble opportunity ; 
but life is not yet ended, and occasions still remain. I 
am weak and worthless ; but Christ has promised that 
his grace shall be sufficient for me. I ought to be better 
8* 



Thanksgiving. 



than I am ; but, thanks be to God for the promise of an 
ultimate perfection. Many a pleasure, many a gratifica- 
tion, which others enjoy, are wholly denied to me ; but, 
God be praised that he has not left me to seek all my 
good things in this life. I am tortured often by the fear 
of death ; but I can go and sit down in the tomb of 
Joseph, and think of Christ and the resurrection. I have 
not all the assurance of faith and hope that I could 
desire • but, how can I be sufficiently grateful for the 
least glimmer of consolation, through the abundant 
mercy of the Son of God? Multiply thorns, burdens, 
and grievances, as you will ; but these afflictions are only 
for a moment. Make my condition deplorable as you 
can ; let the worst that can be conceived come to pass ; 
strip me of friends, of property, of health, of all things ; 
but, what an unspeakable honor and blessedness it is to 
be a child of God, and the heir-expectant of an eternal 
kingdom ! ' 

This is the mode of computation which ought to 
keep us in perpetual thankfulness. It was this method 
of calculation which prompted John Newton, when 
making a pastoral visit to a pious lady who had met with 
a severe calamity in the sudden loss of all her property, 
to accost her with smiles, saying, to her surprise, that he 
had come to congratulate her. " Congratulate, Mr. New- 
ton ! why not condole with me ? " " Why should I not 
congratulate you for possessing that good part which 
never can be taken away from you ? " 

A heart disposed to find material for gratitude on 
all occasions, will never be wanting in substantial hap- 
piness. 



Balancings and Compensations. 179 



O happiness ! our being's end and aim ! 

Good, pleasure, ease, content, whate'er thy name ! 

That something still which prompts the eternal sigh ! 

For which we bear to live, or dare to die ! 

Which still so near us, yet beyond us lies ; 

O'erlooked, seen double, by the fool and wise. 

Plant of celestial seed ! if dropt below, 

Say in what mortal soil thou deign'st to grow. 

Where grows ? Where grows it not ? If vain our toil, 

We ought to blame the culture, not the soil. 

Fix'd to no spot is happiness sincere ; 

'Tis nowhere to be found, or every where. 

Happiness is a temper of the soul, not a condition 
of the person. Its essential elements are gratitude, 
kindness, truth, honor, and unfaltering trust in God ; a 
disposition to see good in all things, and when evil 
comes, to bear it with patience, and more than that, with 
joy, because it is the will of God. The will of God ! It 
is a phrase slipped most volubly from the tongue, but 
what a world of meaning does it contain. All things 
appointed by infinite intelligence, infinite wisdom, and 
infinite love ! Could any one wish to absolve himself 
from such a jurisdiction? 

When the will of God becomes our own — when, 
through the spirit of true piety, the appointments of 
Providence and our own choice are brought into har- 
mony, the ultimatum of our spiritual education is at- 
tained, and we are prepared for an immortal blessedness. 
" Thy will be done on earth — and done by us — as it 
is in heaven ! " Such must be our daily prayer. Let 
others choose what they will, pursue what they will, grasp 
what they will ; give me, for my paramount motive, a 



i8o 



Thanksgiving. 



desire to know and acquiesce in the will of God, and I 
have come into possession of the true elixir of life. 

My God, my Father, while I stray 
Far from my home, in life's rough way, 
Oh, teach me from my heart to say, 
" Thy will be done." 

If thou shouldst call me to resign 
What most I prize — it ne'er was mine — 
I only yield thee what was thine ; 
Thy will be done. 

E'en if again I ne'er should see 
The friend more dear than life to me, 
Ere long we both shall be with thee ; 
Thy will be done. 

Should pining sickness waste away 
My life in premature decay, 
My Father, still I strive to say, 
Thy will be done. 

If but my fainting heart be blest 
With thy sweet spirit for its guest, 
My God, to Thee I leave the rest ; 
Thy will be done. 

Renew my will from day to day ; 
Blend it with thine, and take away 
All that now makes it hard to say, 
Thy will be done. 

Then when on earth I breathe no more 
The prayer, oft mixed with tears before, 
I'll sing upon a happier shore, 
" Thy will be done." 



THE ZEST OF LIFE. 



My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me, and to finish 
His work. 

John 4 : 34. 



IX. 



THE ZEST OF LIFE. 

John Howard once gave this prescription for a 
heavy heart — " Take your hat, and walk off to visit the 
sick, the poor and afflicted." 

What is this but a practical paraphrase of that teach- 
ing which our Lord has amplified and illustrated concern- 
ing the true zest of life ? I use a word of peculiar sig- 
nificance. It will readily be understood by all, even if 
they know nothing of its Persian origin and history. It 
represents that which makes the flavor, the relish, the 
heartiness of life. 

It was sultry noon when Jesus came to the well of 
Sychar. He was travelling on foot. He was wearied 
with his journey, and so sat down on the curb. All his 
disciples had gone into the adjacent city to buy food for 
him and for themselves. There comes a woman to draw 
water at the well, and Christ asks her to give him some 
water from her pitcher. This introduces a conversation of 
a most profound import, relative to living water and ever- 
lasting life and spiritual worship and his own mission 
as the promised Christ and Saviour of the world. His 
disciples return from their errand, and find him engaged 



184 



Thanksgiving. 



in this spirited conversation. They do not presume to 
interrupt it. They listen, and they marvel. They see 
the woman drop her water-pot and run to the city, with 
her strange testimony, and already troops of her neigh- 
bors and fellow-citizens are on their way to see for them- 
selves this extraordinary Prophet. Meantime, his dis- 
ciples press him to take of the food which they had 
brought. Our Lord declines, saying that he had a meat 
to eat of which they knew not. Perceiving that he ap- 
peared vigorous and refreshed, they instantly inferred that, 
during their absence, some one had brought him food, 
of which he had partaken. But our Lord interprets his 
own words. No man had brought him bread. No one 
had given him to drink. " My meat is to do the will of 
Him that sent me, and to finish His work." He had 
been engaged, during their absence, in doing good to a 
benighted human soul. That occupation brought its own 
reward. He was thoroughly refreshed and invigorated, 
body and soul. He had been reaping, and had received 
his wages. He had been working in the spiritual har- 
vest, and he was full of joy. He had gathered fruit, 
which was more than food for the body — even for the 
sustentation of spiritual life in himself and in another. 

Nor does such a satisfaction belong to himself only. 
He has no monopoly of this peculiar delight. Imme- 
diately our Lord announces a law on this subject which 
concerns all his disciples, from that moment to the end 
of the world. The harvest is already ripe, waiting for the 
sickle. Wherever there is a man ready to do good, op- 
portunities for doing good are ready to his hand. Who- 
soever " reapeth receive th wages and gathereth fruit unto 



The Zest of Life. 



185 



life eternal, that both he that soweth and he that reapeth 
may rejoice together." We have, then, in this incident, 
the Christian teaching concerning that which constitutes 
the only t?'ue zest of human life. 

There are multitudes whose whole life passes without 
any zest at all. They endure life ; but never enjoy it. They 
breathe, they eat, they sleep, they move, and all because 
they must ; but life has in it for them no real satisfaction. 
Nor do we include in this class those only who drudge 
along in abject depression ; for those who are under the 
necessity of daily work undoubtedly have an advantage 
over those in the opposite extreme of society, who, releas- 
ed from such a necessity, are often a prey to listlessness, 
vacancy, and disgust. These are they who have many 
excitements, by which they are occupied and stimulated 
from day to day. But excitement is a very different thing 
from zest, though it is often confounded with it. One 
cannot live on stimulants. If one attempts it, he discov- 
ers that they must be diversified and increased ; and after 
all, re-action is sure to ensue when the stimulant loses its 
own power, and the exhausted subject falls flat into indif- 
ference and vacancy. Life has lost its savor, like insipid 
and worthless salt. There are multitudes, in all classes 
and conditions, with whom life has no sapidity. 

Nor can we doubt that many, in a general way, pur- 
pose to lead a life of religion, who utterly fail of all cor- 
rect notions as to what religion is, and what it confers. 
Their conceptions of a religious life are bounded by the 
ideas of necessity and policy and obligation and self- 
interest. Their highest notion concerning it is, that it 
will afford them a bridge over the river of death, and an 



1 8 6 Thanksgiving. 



acquittal and security in the eternal judgment. So far as 
its influence in the present life is concerned, they regard 
it as a power of restraint, imposing self-denial, and the 
stern performance of duty, often unwelcome and painful. 
Was not our Great Exemplar a "man of sorrows"? 
Was not He, our Great Captain and leader in the via 
dolorosa, in which all his followers must walk down to 
the grave, made perfect through suffering ? 

All this may be true ; but it is not all the truth. For 
Christ tells his disciples that there is an immediate re- 
ward in his service ; that we need not think only of 
what is to occur in the harvest at the end of the world, 
for there is a compensation now present : he that reapeth 
receiveth wages — receiveth them even while he worketh, 
the sower and the reaper rejoicing together ; and every 
one who is now engaged in doing the will of God, as 
Christ himself illustrated it at the well of Sychar, shall 
enjoy the true zest of life, its rich and sparkling flavor, its 
tonic, nutritious, and invigorating qualities, day by day. If 
discipline is severe, if trials are manifold, if sufferings 
abound, all the more important, all the more valuable, is 
that habit which constitutes the joyous heartiness of life, 
whether we do or endure the will of God. That is a sad 
life, though it passes under the name of religion, which 
has in it no real zest. That is a pitiable family in which 
affairs are so conducted that life, however varied, has 
no hearty enjoyment. That is a dead church, barren 
and unfruitful in the work of the Lord, whose members 
do not make it their meat and drink, instead of their 
constraint and compulsion, to be diligent in the whitened 
harvests of Christian usefulness. 



The Zest of Life. 



i8 7 



What, now, is the true and only true zest of life? 
that which never is exhausted, never wears away, never 
loses its potency, never re-acts, and never ends ; but, on 
the contrary, always continues, extends, deepens, and 
grows to the very last of our days on earth ? In other 
words, how is it that we ourselves may all enter into 
sympathy with the Son of God, when he described those 
spiritual refreshments which to him were more than 
meat and drink, and which, as he assures us, are within 
the reach of all his disciples ? 

A general answer, obviously, is ready to our hand. 
Our satisfaction must be found in the same quarter with 
that which Christ himself describes as his own — " My 
meat is to do the will of Him that sent me, and to finish 
His work." Analysing this prescription, we find for its 
ingredients these several elements : a reference to the 
will of God in all things, as the supreme motive and law 
of life, and constant activity, on our part, in performing 
what is assigned as our proper work in the world ; or, to 
express both ideas in a more laconic form, ceaseless occu- 
patio7i of our faculties in the service of God. 

The first thing essential to this vigorous and happy 
life is, that God should be recognized in all that we do. 
There is a vast deal of activity in the world, and not a 
little of pleasure and satisfaction in the free use and exer- 
cise of our faculties in the varied pursuits of life. But all 
this pleasurable activity is insufficient and defective if it 
has no recognition of God, and our dutiful service to 
Him. Take out of life the ideas of God's existence, His 
distribution of talent, His appointment of place and duty, 
and all regard to His will and approbation, as the end 



1 8 8 Thanksgiving. 



and reward of our existence, and you rob life instantly of 
its most dignified and pleasurable ingredients, reducing 
it to a blank, dreary, and infidel fatalism. On the other 
hand, the first thing which results from a direct recogni- 
tion of the will of God is, that we may dispense at once, 
and throw out of our calculation, all regard to condition 
and possessions and kinds of occupation, of which the 
most is ordinarily made in human estimate, infusing into 
all alike this common charm, that God assigns our work, 
and the means of doing it. Here is a zest for the man 
of one talent, as well as for him with ten ; for one who toils 
in poverty, and for him who has largest estates ; for him 
who works in the field, the shop, the mine ; and for him 
who makes laws, who forges thoughts, who sways senates, 
and rules over nations. The busy housewife in the low- 
liest cabin, and the proudest queen in all the palaces of 
the world, in this regard are on a level. Their condition 
is appointed of God, and all alike are sanctified and 
dignified by the idea of duty. This, indeed, gives a 
zest to life, and constitutes its most spicy and tonic 
quality — that it is pervaded by a sense of obligation 
and obedience to Almighty God, whose approbation is 
the highest and largest good. A scholar, a king, can 
reach nothing better ; the cripple cobbler may have as 
much. 

Whoever I am, wherever my lot, 

Whatever I happen to be, 
Contentment and duty shall hallow the spot 

That Providence orders for me ; 
No covetous straining and striving to gain 

One feverish step in advance ; 



The Zest of Life. 



189 



I know my own place, and you tempt me in vain 
To hazard a change or a chance. 

I care for no riches that are not my right, 

No honor that is not my due ; 
But stand in my station, by day or by night, 

The will of my master to do. 
He lent me my lot, be it humble or high, 

And set me my business here, 
And whether I live in his service or die, 

My heart shall be found in my sphere. 

The good that it pleases my God to bestow, 

I gratefully gather and prize ; 
The evil — it can be no evil, I know, 

But only a good in disguise. 
And whether my station be lowly or great, 

No duty can ever be mean. 
The factory-cripple is fixed in his fate, 

As well as a king or a queen. 

For Duty's bright livery glorifies all 

With brotherhood equal and free — 
Obeying, as children, the heavenly call 

That places us where we should be. 
Away, then, with " helpings " that humble and harm, 

Though " bettering " trips from your tongue ; 
Away ! for your folly would scatter the charm 

That round my proud poverty hung. 

I will not, I dare not, I cannot ! I stand 

Where God has ordained me to be — 
An honest mechanic — a lord in the land : 

He fitted my calling for me. 
Whatever my state, be it weak, be it strong, 

With honor, or sweat on my face, 
This, this is my glory, my strength, and my song, 

I stand, like a star, in my place. 



190 



Thanksgiving. 



Starting with this idea, duty as related to the will of 
God, we have next to combine with it the habit of con- 
stant activity in its performance, and our inquiry is 
answered ; the true zest of life is discovered. Sure 
we must be to start from this point, of obedient regard 
to the will of God ; for so certain as we take it for the 
purpose of life to do our own will, to please ourselves in 
the way of a selfish greed and ambition, we shall come 
into the experience of all those rivalries and disappoint- 
ments and frictions and vexations, which are the inevi- 
table consequences of a misdirected and godless life. 
The will of Him that sent us into the world, and appoint- 
ed our birth, condition, occupation, being our point 
of departure, now let every faculty be brought into 
exercise, diligently and constantly, and the secret of all 
Christian refreshment is disclosed. Not enough to 
know God's will ; we must do it. " My meat," said 
Christ, " is to do the will of Him that sent me." To 
have a work, and to be diligent in finishing it, in God's 
name — this is the charm of life. Doing and working are 
here in antithesis to idleness and apathy. He who is the 
most active, from the best motives, is the happiest of his 
species. God himself is full of blessedness, because he 
is full of activity. A divinity asleep above the clouds is 
a heathen conception ; ours is the living God. With 
Him is no night and no sleep, but all is ceaseless and 
infinite activity. Jesus Christ was always intent on doing 
good; and he who finds the most occupation for all 
his time and all his faculties, and this from a sense of 
duty, is the most blessed of men. Some who are inces- 
santly employed, often to the verge of physical and 



The Zest of Life. 191 

mental fatigue, imagine what pleasure there would be in 
leisure and rest. But they know not what they say. 
They are cheated by a mirage. A thousand-fold happier 
is he who is occupied, even to this degree, than another 
who drawls through life with so much time at his dis- 
posal that he knows not what to do with it ; who sleeps 
away as much as he can, and who, when he wakes, yawns, 
and wonders as to the way in which he shall dispose of 
the remainder. What a zest there is in sleep, to a 
man who comes to it wearied in the discharge of duty, 
and with the consciousness that it belongs to him. What 
a zest there is in a day of recreation, — a season of relax- 
ation — when it comes in the evident course of duty, as a 
gift and appointment of the best of Masters, and not as 
a largess to be squandered in our own indulgence. 
What a flavor is imparted to the whole of life, to be 
occupied all the time, and this because we are serving 
our God and master. What a tonic pleasure there is, 
when one awakes in the morning, to know what his work 
is — that there is enough of it, and that he has a heart to 
do it. There is nothing in abundant leisure, in elegant 
ease, in listless vacancy, ever to be compared with this 
enjoyment of constant occupation in doing the will of 
Him who appoints our condition and our work. 

Far as we have advanced in our subject, we have not yet 
touched its core. The occupations of our Lord were of a 
peculiar sort. They all had reference to what is distinc- 
tively benevolent — of good to the bodies and souls of men. 
His divine pleasure was the reflection of the happiness 
he conferred on others. While it is true that all the oc- 
cupations which Providence appoints are in a real sense 



192 



Thanksgiving, 



to be regarded as religious, even those which in our com- 
mon language we call secular, it is certainly true that he 
who is the most busy in devising and executing what is 
for the good of others, comes nearest to the holy heart 
and joy of Christ. We can conceive of one propelled in 
ceaseless activity to that degree that he escapes all of 
listlessness and inanition, and the sad weariness of no- 
thing to do, while there is about his whole manner too 
much of mere obligation in the discharge of duty. He 
needs a larger infusion of Christian benevolence. He 
lacks the very spirit which made Jesus Christ so alert 
and so happy in his endeavors to instruct and bless. 
The whole mechanism, though it is at work, needs a cer- 
tain lubrication. It needs the oil of joy and gladness. 
In a word, the zest of life is activity, with a kindly spirit 
and intent. It is charity out of a pure heart. He who 
is pervaded with the love which Christ illustrated and 
Christ enjoins, and is active therein, has reached far 
nearer the centre of life, than he who is only active in 
obedience to Providence. That we hit the truth on this 
subject, appears from the fact that Christ refers his dis- 
ciples to the harvest which was then inviting their toil. 
He speaks of a peculiar kind of sowing and of reaping, 
and a peculiar kind of wages. What a serene joy was 
in the soul of Christ when he saw those Samaritans be- 
lieving in him, to their own salvation. We endeavor to 
conceive the joy of the widow of Nain, when receiving 
her dead son alive again by the miracle of our Lord ; we 
imagine the gladness there was in the homes where the 
sick were healed, the cripple, the blind, the deaf, restored 
lo the use of their faculties ; but what was all this com- 



The Zest of Life. 193 

pared to the deep and ineffable delight in the heart of 
Christ because he had wrought so great relief This is 
the species of reward to which he invites his disciples 
by his word and his example. The very activity which 
Christ employed for the good of the citizens of Sychar, 
we are to repeat, as the means of sustaining and invigo- 
rating our own spiritual life. What pleasure is felt by 
the reaper, strong and robust, in a harvest-field, swinging 
his sickle with vigorous stroke ; what a sensation of joy- 
ous health is his ; the currents of life run smoothly and 
briskly through all his veins, and he needs no physician 
to assure him that he is well ; he knows it ; he feels it ; 
and if we were half as active and diligent in doing good, 
our refreshments and rewards would be so palpable that 
our faces would shine with religious delight. If there 
was a better comprehension and practise of this exercise 
and activity in Christian work, no one would need a 
magnifying glass to make his religion visible. Instead 
of directing a telescopic sight at a religious feeling the 
moment it shows its head, and running after it till it is 
scared away and hides itself in its burrow, we should 
be conscious, through and through, of the life by which 
we are made blessed. All this irrespective of the results 
of our Christian working. We may be defeated in our 
most kindly intentions : not all of the Samaritans be- 
lieved on Christ. We may not be rewarded in all in- 
stances with seeing the fruit of our labors for others ; 
but we are sure of fruit for the sustaining of our own 
life, as wheat is for the nourishment of the body. He 
that reapeth receiveth wages. Here is a present compen- 
sation. Here is an immediate delight. Here is the 
9 



i 9 4 



Thanksgiving. 



zest of life : constant exercise of Christia7i benevolence. 
There is no poverty in the soul that loves ; every thought, 
every wish, every act, which looks to the good of others, 
comes back to the heart from which it issued, laden with 
a double blessing. 

While this is so — while payment and w r ork are in- 
separable — there is another reward which is for the 
future. We are instructed as to the satisfaction which 
Christ enjoyed in his earthly work ; shall we not think 
of the peculiar delight which will be his when he 
looks upon the fruit of his toil, gathered into the garner, 
at the end of the world ? We read that he will see of 
the travail of his soul and will be satisfied. When all 
who have believed on him, to the saving of their souls, 
shall come home at the last, filling the heavens with their 
glorified forms, and overflowing with gratitude and joy, 
all their gladness compounded together will not equal 
the joy of Christ, the infinite Fountain of all good, in the 
conscious blessedness of having conferred such bound- 
less happiness. Shall we forget that he has promised to 
every faithful servant of his, that he shall be a partaker 
of the same satisfaction ? The words are written which 
will be uttered to all who come home bearing their 
sheaves with them on that great day of disclosure and 
result : " Well done, good and faithful servant ; enter 

thou into THE JOY OF THY LORD ! " 

Mr. Coleridge has said : 

" Would I frame to myself the most inspiriting repre- 
sentation of future bliss which my mind is capable of 
comprehending, it would be embodied to me in the idea 
of Bell receiving, at some distant period, the appropriate 



The Zest of Life. 



l 9S 



reward of his earthly labors ; when thousands and ten 
thousands of glorified spirits, whose reason and con- 
science had through his efforts been unfolded, shall sing 
the song of their own redemption, and, pouring forth 
praise to God and to their Saviour, shall repeat his ' new 
name ' in heaven, give thanks for his earthly virtues, as 
the chosen instruments of divine mercy to themselves, 
and, not seldom perhaps, turn their eyes towards him, as 
from the sun to its image in the fountain, with secondary 
gratitude and the permitted utterance of a human love." 

To save us from those temptations to despondency 
which spring from the thought that they only are to be 
honored and rewarded, on earth and in heaven, who ac- 
complish signal services, our Lord has more than once 
instructed us that he regards dispositions rather than 
quantities ; that the gift of a cup of cold water, in the 
spirit of Christian kindness, shall not be unnoticed and 
unrewarded ; and that the true affinities of our nature are 
to be decided by those acts which are within the reach 
and capacity of all — visiting the sick, caring for the stran- 
ger, ministering to the hungry, the thirsty, and the naked. 



POLITICS AND THE PULPIT. 



I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, inter- 
cessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men ; for kings, and 
for all that are in authority ; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable 
life in all godliness and honesty. 

i Tim. 2 : i, 2. 



X. 



POLITICS AND THE PULPIT. 

Public attention has been frequently directed to what 
is generally understood by " preaching politics" Confused 
and inconsistent notions concerning this subject are enter- 
tained by many. Some are very jealous of any allusions 
from the pulpit to matters affecting the State. Others insist 
that the pulpit shall be out-spoken and explicit in the ad- 
vocacy of their own favorite policy. So long as the minis- 
try is a power in the world, its influence will be deprecated 
or invoked in aid of all objects where power is coveted. 
Few men have objections to the preaching of politics, so 
long as it is their own politics which are preached. 

A clergyman preaches a discourse which he thinks is 
demanded by the perils of the country. The doctrine he 
advocates is distasteful to certain conductors of the polit- 
ical press, who forthwith censure him for transcending 
his proper vocation. He is accused of meddling with 
subjects which do not belong to his profession. He is 
distinctly informed that if he ventures to intrude into such 
an arena, his high and holy calling will be disgraced, and 
the white robes of his office will be sullied by the missiles 
with which he will certainly be pelted by excited men. 



200 



Thanksgiving. 



Ere long the pulpit speaks again, from another quarter 
and in another tone. It promulgates doctrines now 
which happen to be agreeable to the very men who be- 
fore censured the clergy for presuming to speak at all on 
such subjects, but who now congratulate themselves, the 
country, and religion itself, for such wise, wholesome, and 
timely counsels. ' Now the ministry is doing its proper 
work. It does not stand aloof from those practical con- 
cerns which affect the well-being of society, but, as God's 
most beneficent agent, it is shedding the light and author- 
ity of heaven on the interests of time.' 

Herein is a manifest inconsistency. Silence and 
speech at the same time, and in regard to the same sub- 
ject, cannot both be right. That is no pendulum which 
swings only on one side. Surely there must be some 
fixed principles pertaining to this subject which ought to 
be ascertained, otherwise the Christian pulpit is destitute 
of all dignity, exposed by turns to flattery or contempt. 

As to the chief and distinctive object of the Christian 
ministry, there can be no diversity of opinion. It is to 
announce these truths which affect man in his highest 
relations — to God and immortality. Unlike other teach- 
ers who, beginning with the lower ascend to the higher, 
the Christian ministry are appointed to proclaim those 
truths which relate to the supreme interests of our race. 
In the act of doing this, irrespective of all earthly distinc- 
tions, ignoring all those strata and conditions of society 
which the Apostle intends by " knowing man after the 
flesh," the teachers of religion are by an insensible and 
indirect process contributing most to that secular pros- 
perity which others make their direct and exclusive 



Politics and the Pulpit. 



201 



pursuit. Elevating man in the scale of character, by 
introducing him to an immediate fellowship with his 
Maker, you are sure to confer importance on all which 
concerns his relations to his fellow-men and this present 
life. We need not expand this thought, that intelligence, 
freedom, law, order, enterprise, commerce, arts, industry, 
wealth, follow in the train of the Christian religion. Any 
tyro in history and geography will admit as much. He 
who preaches repentance towards God and faith towards 
our Lord Jesus Christ, employing himself with those 
distinctive and germinant truths which are his peculiar 
themes, is contributing more than he knows to the welfare 
of states and the true prosperity of nations. In this 
sense, political reforms are embosomed in the doctrine 
of Justification by Faith, and national progresses insured 
by Christian devotion. 

True religion should pervade the whole of man's 
being. The Sabbath, the closet,; the church, are not its 
exclusive sphere ; his business and his politics belong to 
it as well. By politics we understand his relations to the 
State. It cannot be admitted that these and other secular 
interests, as they are called, are too common and unclean 
for contact with religion, since the broad requirement of 
the Scripture is that " whether we eat or drink, or what- 
ever we do, we should do all to the glory of God:" and 
if political duties and relations are not to be pervaded by 
the spirit of religion, then are we involved in the practical 
solecism, that there is a large part of our existence which 
is necessarily irreligious ; and still farther, the necessity is 
entailed of a sufficient number being detached, even in 
the millennium, to rig and work the ship of State, an un- 
9* 



202 



Thanksgiving. 



godly crew, beyond the suspicion of all sanctity and piety. 
This common distinction between the secular and the 
religious is a convenience of speech for certain purposes, 
but it conveys a falsity ; since in the better generalization 
of the New Testament religion covers the whole extent 
of our being, the countless variety of our interests and 
relations ; just as the sea fills all the bays and inlets and 
creeks with its in-flowing waters. 

From these general principles, in this form, there can 
be no dissent. The difficulty is in the application of the 
latter principle on the part of the ministry, in an official 
capacity, to specific cases. 

Perhaps it will help us in reaching the truth on this 
subject, if we refresh our memories with a few historical 
facts. The time was, in our ancestral land, when, Church 
and State being combined in one organism, the clergy 
with few exceptions were little more than the tools of the 
throne. " Tuning the pulpit " was a very significant ex- 
pression, as used by Queen Elizabeth, to describe the 
subserviency of courtly chaplains in advocating the royal 
will. W e are conscious of pitiful regret for the times and 
the men, when it was not uncommon, if a preacher expa- 
tiated with any thing of freedom, for a gruff Tudor-voice 
from the royal pew to bid him return from his " ungodly 
digression and keep himself to his text." 

Life cannot always be cramped and fettered, and at 
length there arose an order of men who claimed the right 
to declare the truth of God in utmost freedom, account- 
able only to its divine Author.* The assertion of religious 

* "What Jeremy Taylor has called the " liberty of prophesying" 
in his famous SeoAoyia e«\eKT</r^. 



Politics and the Pulpit. 203 

liberty necessarily prepared the way for personal and 
political liberty, and Hume himself, tory and sceptic as 
he was, was compelled to admit that English Puritanism 
was the root and life of all true English freedom. 

The colonization of New England was a religious 
movement ; and to subtract from it the direct and posi- 
tive influence of church and ministry, would be like 
taking out the bones and soul from the human body. 
Those colonists have been often censured and ridiculed 
for the ecclesiastical requirements which they exacted in 
political relations and magistracies. The truth is, that 
at that time every nation in Christendom required relig- 
ious conformities of those who officiated in affairs of 
State. That which was peculiar and novel on the part 
of the Puritan colonists was, that their ideas of the church 
and of religion went beyond the outward form, to a heart- 
renovation — a new test which repelled and disgusted the 
adventurers who had no sympathy with spiritual religion. 

So the foundations of our national life were laid. 
There are two distinct periods in our national history 
when the agency of the clergy was very conspicuous, the 
object of reprehension or encomium by different parties. 
The first of these was at and during the Revolutionary 
war, and the formation of a new government, independent 
of Great Britain. The second was from the change of 
politics under President Jefferson, culminating in the war 
of 18 1 2, and extending down, with a gradual diminution 
of prejudice and violence, to a time within the memory 
of most of our readers. Consulting these several peri- 
ods, we shall find much to admire, and much to censure ; 
many mistakes, many fidelities and proofs of wisdom. 



Thanksgiving. 



When troubles arose between the American Colonies 
and the British Government, the whole structure of so- 
ciety was shaken, and men of all professions and pursuits 
were compelled to avow their sentiments and choose 
their position. At this distance of time it is common to 
suppose that the action of the American people was 
unanimous in advocating independence from the British 
throne. This was far from being true. The people were 
divided among themselves. The crown officers, and 
many of the leading and opulent citizens, were opposed 
to separation from Great Britain. The result was invec- 
tive, reproach, and violence — distracted counties, towns, 
and parishes. The idea of multitudes was to resist what 
they held to be unjust and oppressive on the part of the 
British Crown ; to demand the sanctity of charters — the 
right of representation ; but not to sever themselves as 
integral parts of the British realm. In this assertion of 
colonial right and justice, the clergy with wonderful 
unanimity sympathized ; but God intended more than 
they at first foresaw. The rock once loosened from its 
bed was destined to roll on notwithstanding all obstruc- 
tions. The idea of national independence gained famil- 
iarity and force ; and at length the struggle began. There 
was a necessity that the clergy, in common with all other 
citizens, should adopt one side or the other. Some for a 
while hesitated to commit themselves to what appeared 
to be irreligious rebellion. Their scruples were founded 
on religious grounds. The Episcopal Church, with some 
notable exceptions, was particularly conspicuous in this 
position ; indeed, some of the early pamphlets relating 
to the Revolution inform us that the hostility to Great 



Politics and the Pulpit. 



205 



Britain cherished by the Congregational and Presbyte- 
rian ministers, was imputed to a sectarian origin, as being 
moved by the fact that the Episcopal Church was sus- 
tained and established by the parent-country. The pre- 
cise state of many among the American people, in the 
incipient stages of the Revolution, will better appear 
from a few examples. 

Dr. Jonathan Mayhew, the pastor of the West Church 
in Boston, published a thanksgiving sermon in May, 
1766, on the occasion of the repeal of the Stamp Act, 
from the text : " Our soul is escaped as a bird from the 
snare of the fowlers, the snare is broken and we are 
escaped." This discourse, full of patriotism, is pervaded 
with the idea that justice had been done, the wrong re- 
dressed, and the difficulty adjusted. It was dedicated to 
William Pitt. On the 22d of June, 1775, Dr. William 
Smith, Provost of the University of Pennsylvania, 
preached a sermon in Christ Church, Philadelphia, in 
which he " pants for the return of those halcyon days of 
harmony during which the two countries flourished to- 
gether as the glory and wonder of the world " — and while 
demanding that Britain should do justly with her colo- 
nies, he affirms that the idea of independence from the 
parent-country is " utterly foreign to their thoughts, and 
that our rightful sovereign has nowhere more loyal sub- 
jects, or more zealously attached to those principles of 
government under which he inherited his throne." An- 
other instance yet more to the point : Dr. Duche, of 
Philadelphia, is known as the divine who opened the 
Continental Congress, in 1774, with prayer. In 1776 he 
was appointed Chaplain to the Congress, but at an early 



206 



Thanksgiving, 



stage of the war he manifested a decided opposition to 
independence, and in a long letter to General Washington 
endeavored to dissuade him from the cause to which he 
was pledged. Dr. Zubly, of Savannah, in 1775 a mem- 
ber of the first Provincial Congress of Georgia, preached 
a sermon in that year at the opening of that body, im- 
pregnated with the spirit of patriotism and liberty, but 
strongly discountenancing the independence of the colo- 
nies. These examples will suffice to show how great was 
the hesitation on the part of many, and this on ethical 
and religious grounds, to a severance of the body politic. 
As Christian men they dreaded schisms in Church and 
State. The discourses from which we have drawn our 
illustrations were delivered in the beginning of the war, 
when ethics were not yet classified and adjusted by facts. 
With a very few and notable exceptions — such as the 
witty and eccentric Dr. Byles of Boston, whose connec- 
tion with his congregation was dissolved in 1776 because 
of his toryism — who was denounced in town-meeting as 
an enemy to his country, and afterwards tried before a 
special court on the charge of praying for the King, re- 
ceiving visits from British officers, and remaining in the 
town during the siege — who, in his own words, was 
"guarded, re-guarded, and disregarded "* — the vast body 

* On one occasion, when sentenced, under suspicion of toryism, 
to be confined to his own house, with a sentinel over him, he per- 
suaded this sentinel to go on an errand for him, promising to take 
his place. The sentinel consented to the arrangement, and to the 
great amusement of all who passed, Dr. Byles was seen very gravely 
marching before his own door, the musket on his shoulder, keeping 
guard over himself. — Encyc. A?ner. 



Politics and the Pulpit. 



207 



of the unprelatical ministry of the country advocated the 
Revolution, in public and private, on Christian principles. 
They justified the war on religious grounds. They be- 
lieved that human rights and liberties would gain by its 
success. They had the sagacity to foresee its issue. 
Among the most faithful of religious men, modest and 
pains-taking in their parishes, there was no concealment 
of their sympathies. Many of them went as chaplains 
into the army, among them Dwight — darum et venerabile 
nomen; and he retains in his lyrical collections that 
paraphrase of the Psalms which is now dropped out of 
our books, as judged to be obsolete : 

" Lord, hast thou cast the nation off, 

Must we forever mourn, 
Wilt thou indulge immortal wrath, 

Shall mercy ne'er return ? 
Lift up a banner in the field 

For those that fear thy name ; 
Save thy beloved with thy shield, 

And put our foes to shame. 
Go with our armies to the fight 

Like a confed'rate God : 
In vain confed'rate foes unite 

Against thy lifted rod. 
Our troops shall gain a wide renown 

By thine assisting hand : 
'Tis God that treads the mighty down 

And makes the feeble stand." 

Scarcely was there a battle-field in the Revolutionary 
war where the clergy were not present, as chaplains or 
surgeons, to cheer and bless. Their patriotism was a 



2o8 Thanksgiving. 



thing of general admiration. They reasoned themselves 
and the country out of all hesitancy and scruples, as they 
knew how to reason. They abounded in what Sir John 
Hawkins calls "precatory eloquence"; calling down the 
blessing's of the Almighty upon the country ; and the 
depth and sway of their influence in achieving the inde- 
pendence of the colonies cannot be too highly extolled. 
; Withal, it was with them a time of great personal priva- 
' tion and hardship. They shared in the largest measure 
the calamities of the country. They practised the ex- 
treme of frugality to eke out their scanty subsistence. 
They were exposed to violent opposition in their distract- 
ed parishes. But they were, as a body, brave, patient, 
meek, pious, patriotic, and learned — an honor to any 
land. Under God, we owe it to the ministry of that day 
that the morals of the country were not hopelessly 
wrecked in the convulsions of the Revolution. The pro- 
fession emerged from the war with increased credit and 
honor, and with the confidence, respect, and gratitude of 
the people. The war over, they led the nation in song 
and thanksgiving on the shores of the sea they had 
crossed, and forthwith addressed themselves to their 
appropriate work, in conservation of the liberties which 
the Revolution had helped to secure. A few here and 
there were left in a most pitiful predicament. In tacking 
ship they had missed stays, and were stranded on a lee 
shore. In proof that no human ministry is infallible, 
some had misjudged the case, and were forced to suffer 
the consequences. What was the state of feeling in those 
parishes, where the minister retained either loyalty to the 
British Crown or a professed neutrality, may be inferred 



Politics and the Pulpit. 



209 



from a single incident. Rev. Dr. Burnet, of the Presby- 
tery of New York, was settled in Jamaica, L. L, and at 
the return of peace felt himself obliged to resign his 
charge. At the close of his farewell service, he gave out 
the 1 20th Psalm. Whether the muscles of the choir 
were equal to its musical intonation, or the minds of the 
people to its devout response, tradition does not inform 
us : 

" Hard lot of mine ; my days are cast 
Among the sons of strife, 
Whose never-ceasing quarrels waste 
My golden hours of life. 

" Oh ! might I fly to change my place, 
How would I choose to dwell 
In some wide, lonesome wilderness, 
And leave these gates of hell. 

" Peace is the blessing that I seek : 
How lovely are its charms ! 
I am for peace ; but when I speak, 
They all declare for arms." 

We come now to the second period referred to, when 
the preaching of some of the clergy on political affairs 
was of a most notorious character. A change had taken 
place in political parties, and it was so marked that the 
clergy could not conceal their sentiments. With few 
exceptions, they had been on the side of Washington, and 
bore the name of Federalists. When this unanimity was 
disturbed by the election of Mr. Jefferson to the Presi- 
dency, they inveighed against it, in some instances, with a 
tremendous emphasis. It must be borne in mind that 



2IO 



Thanksgiving. 



party spirit was then at fever-heat. Families and neigh- 
borhoods were set at variance, church-members of dif- 
ferent parties refused to pray together, and young people 
from families of different political preferences would not 
dance at the same assemblies. Never before or since 
did the spirit of party prove itself so ardent and violent. 
It was a new experience for the country. The clergy 
thought that it portended worse than it proved. The 
people of New England, especially, looked with horror 
upon French infidelity — French revolutions — which they 
had associated with the new party in our own land. The 
French Republic had just before decreed the abolition 
of all religion, and the enthronement of Human Reason. 
All Christendom was convulsed with terror. In 1798 
President Adams appointed a day of national fasting. 
Doubtless this association was in part the cause of the 
hostility which the clergy manifested towards Mr. Jefferson 
and his party. They stood aghast, thinking that the 
country was ruined. They thought that they would be 
unfaithful to a solemn trust, if they did not lift up their 
voice in testimony. It amuses us, at this distance of 
time, to read what they said and did. Some of the 
sermons of that day have a historic renown. Such, for 
example, as what is known as the Jeroboam Sermon of 
Dr. Emmons. It was on the day preceding the annual 
Fast-day in Massachusetts, in the year 1801, that the 
acute metaphysician of Franklin sat in his study, greatly 
perplexed what to preach on the ensuing day. What he 
did preach was never forgotten. It was just after the 
inauguration of Mr. Jefferson, and Jeroboam was made 
that day to play a parallelism which would have astonish- 



Politics and the Pulpit. 211 

ed himself. The curious analogy is a rare specimen of 
long-drawn, solemn, and withering rebuke. After it had 
been extended through nearly two hours, it hardly needed 
at its close what, according to the phraseology of the day, 
was called an " improvement," which was given in these 
words : " It is more than possible that our nation may 
find themselves in the hand of a Jeroboam who will drive 
them from following the Lord ; and whenever they do, 
they will rue the day and detest the folly, delusion, and 
intrigue, which raised him to the head of the United 
States." 

We are referring now to facts which need some 
explanation ; for which much may be said in apology, but 
nothing in justification as a model of duty for ourselves. 
The mistake was, that, in the intensity of feeling which 
then prevailed, there was no discrimination between what 
was ethical and what was partisan. Opposing the new 
administration, on one point, because of its supposed 
affinity with French atheism, some fought it at every 
point, pugnis et calcibus — embargo, gunboats, no matter 
what — wherever it showed its hand or head. 

These political antipathies were long-lived. They 
culminated during the war with England in 18 12. But 
they cropped out long after whenever they could claim a 
show of decency. Some of the sermons preached during 
that period were of a most extraordinary character. No 
dried orange-peel or caraway-seed were necessary to keep 
audiences awake under those pulpit deliverances. One 
denounces Napoleon Bonaparte as the " first-born of the 
devil," and Thomas Jefferson and James Madison his 
twin brothers. Another takes for his text the 8th verse 



212 



Thanksgiving, 



of the 109th Psalm : " Let his days be few ; and let an- 
other take his office." The "Bramble" sermon of Dr. 
Osgood, of Medford, (founded on the parable of Jotham, 
Judges 9 : 14 : " Then said all the trees unto the bramble, 
Come thou, and reign over us,") is as famous as the 
Jeroboam sermon of Dr. Emmons. There was no circum- 
locutory preaching in those days. Velvet phrases and 
uncertain inferences were alike discarded. It is reported 
of one minister, that for a considerable time he was ac- 
customed to pray for the Chief Magistrate that God would 
"gently and easily remove his servant by death." # It 
will be remembered by many of our readers, that on a 
certain year a worthy gentleman in Massachusetts, after 
being a candidate of the Democratic party for Governor 
for twenty years, was finally elected to the office by a 
majority of one vote. It will also be recollected by all 
whose early life was passed in that State, that the custom 
prevailed, whenever the Governor issued his annual pro- 
clamation for thanksgiving, of sending by the sheriff of 
the county a copy of the same, on a large hand-bill, to be 
read from every pulpit, which document invariably closed, 
after the signature of the Governor, with the pious ex- 

* In one instance a child was presented in church, for baptism. 
The father, having imbibed a preference for the new politics, whis- 
pered to the clergyman, as the name to be given to his child — 
Thomas Jefferson. Horrified at the sound, the old minister dip- 
ped his hand in the baptismal font, and, with a firm voice, announced 
that the child's name was John. "Thomas — Thomas Jefferson," 
interrupted the father. But the old Federalist would not budge ; 
finishing the scene as he had begun. He would not profane the 
House of God by repeating in Christian Baptism the name he so 
resolutely abhorred. 



Politics and the Pulpit. 



213 



clamation, " God save the Commonwealth of Massachu- 
setts ! " On the year referred to the newly-elected magis- 
trate issued his proclamation in the usual form. It is 
said that a venerable clergyman, of the old party, laid the 
broad sheet over his reading-board, and after performing 
the professional duty of reciting it, with an ill-disguised 
aversion, actually announced the official signature with 
this significant intonation : " Marcus Morton, Governor ? 
God save the Commonwealth of Massachusetts ! " 

It is for an important purpose that we have referred 
to a few of these notorious incidents which belong to the 
history of the American pulpit. Admit that such acts 
and expressions on the part of the ministry were mistakes, 
never to be imitated, — much should be said for their ex- 
culpation. In the first place, the instances of such 
distinctively political preaching were comparatively few. 
The very notoriety which these have attained is in proof 
that the great body of the ministry, whatever may have 
been their private sentiments, addicted themselves faith- 
fully to the great concerns of their office. In many 
instances, those who had practised this method of political 
preaching lived to express their personal regret for the 
same. The late Rev. Dr. Lyman, of Hatfield, at the 
installation of his successor, used language truly pathetic 
in the acknowledgment of what he regarded as a great 
mistake in his own ministry. Another thing to be said in 
their vindication is, that such utterances were not on the 
Sabbath-day, but, perhaps without exception, on Fast-days, 
or Thanksgiving-days, or — what was always celebrated 
in New England by a sermon — Election-day. Still another 
thing should be said. The clergy of that period had 



2I 4 



Thanksgiving. 



been educated to regard themselves as the "moral police 
and constabulary of the country," and silence, sudden 
and complete, was more than could be expected of mortal 
man, when on the losing side, after a lifetime of explicit 
and applauded testimony. Nor must we forget to add 
that, in times of high political excitement, the words of a 
minister, in prayer or sermon, receive a construction from 
interested and jealous parties which they were never 
intended to bear. Minds surcharged with political parti- 
sanship will pervert, and exaggerate, and apply the sim- 
ple utterances of a minister, in a way which might well 
astonish him. Rev. Dr. David Ely, of Huntington, 
Connecticut, is described as one of the most prudent, 
faithful, spiritual pastors of his times. In a season of 
great political excitement, it was reported by persons 
hostile to him, that he had preached on political subjects 
in a neighboring parish. It was thought proper to trace 
the report to its source. The neighboring parish was 
visited, and the inquiry made : " Did Dr. Ely preach 
politics when here ? Yes. What did he say ? Well, sir, 
if he did not preach politics, he prayed politics. What 
did he say? Say? he said, ' Though hand join in hand, 
yet the wicked shall not go unpunished.' " Seasons there 
are when auditors are so magnetized with partisan pas- 
sion, that they put their own sense on the language of a 
preacher, exaggerating or misapplying it, so that in the 
presence of such a suspicious and watchful jealousy he 
stands no chance at all, unless he adopt the resolution 
of the Psalmist on a certain occasion : " I will keep my 
mouth with a bridle, while the wicked is before me." 
This rapid survey of a very extended historic period, 



Politics and the Pulpit. 215 



with its motley assemblage of incidents, may help us in 
our undertaking to state some of the principles which 
should govern the Christian ministry in their official rela- 
tions to political concerns. Starting from that which we 
hold to be the grand design of the Gospel and its ap- 
pointed heralds — to save the souls of men — whatever 
their nationality or their politics, we hold that every thing 
pertaining to the sphere of morals belongs to the province 
of the Christian theologian and preacher. We emphasize 
the word which helps us to discriminate between what has 
been right and what wrong in the practice of the pulpit. 
What is distinctively ethical may be discussed in its 
proper time and place on Christian principles. There 
are ethical principles which should govern our conduct in 
political relations. There are many things pertaining to 
what are called politics which involve no special relation 
to morals, concerning which a minister may have his per- 
sonal preference, but which it would be highly indecorous 
for him to introduce and urge officially. The relations 
of morality and immorality to political economy are 
many ; but we would hardly judge that theories of free 
trade, and taxation, and naval architecture, and embar- 
goes, were the proper material for pulpit instruction. 
Are we required to give the rule which should govern a 
minister in his treatment of those political questions 
which are directly related to morals? None can be 
given, beyond this — they should be presented according 
to the proportion of faith ; in the right season ; and in 
the right manner. The whole gradation must be left to 
the good sense and enlightened judgment of the 
preacher himself. If he is lacking in these qualities, no 



2l6 



Thanksgiving. 



number of specific directions would be of any avail. 
Topics in the whole range of moral relations, frcm the 
highest to the lowest, belong to his sphere — but the or- 
der, frequency, and emphasis of their discussion must 
depend on seasons and necessities which cannot be de- 
fined in advance. 

Some things, however, may be made more specific. 
Happily, we live in a country where there is no alliance 
between Church and State. No political power, organized 
or unorganized, may prescribe and dictate what a minis- 
ter shall preach. This freedom, however, has two sides 
or aspects ; for neither may a preacher prescribe or dic- 
tate to his hearers what they shall think or do, except in 
those cases where he has the authority of the Supreme. 
We touch at once the secret of popular jealousy in regard 
to pulpit utterances. These have been made, sometimes, 
with arrogance and assumed authority. There was a 
time when the clergy wore big wigs and an imposing 
official dress ; and it was expected that their opinions 
would be received with deference by a reverential parish. 

" For still they gazed, and still the wonder grew 
That one small head could carry all he knew." 

The time has come when opinions do not prevail be- 
cause uttered ex cathedra. If an incumbent of the pulpit 
indulges in crude thoughts, immature judgments, ebulli- 
tions of feeling, and false reasoning, he must expect 
animadversion, correction, and refutation. Another 
cometh after him and searcheth him. No one would cur- 
tail the freedom of the ministry, but the ministry must 
remember that there is a freedom and right of judgment 



Politics and the Pulpit. 



217 



for the pews as well as the pulpit. We should not for a 
moment hold controversy with a man whether he ought 
or ought not to assert and promulgate the will of God, 
when he knows it — and to challenge the obedience of all 
men to that supreme authority. But when he assumes 
the same tone and manner of authority in reference to 
matters unwritten, involved, and debatable, we may surely 
ask him to exhibit his credentials. W e will be the first 
to submit to his dictation when we have actually seen the 
seal of heaven in his hand, and are satisfied on the capi- 
tal point of his divine legation.* The occult principle 
which has occasioned all the rancor and hostility excited 
by the interference of the pulpit, is this assumption of 
divine authority in behalf of what is nothing but an indi- 
vidual opinion. If the man who derives his opinion, 
simply, by his own confession, from the personal study 
of the Scriptures, and who has enjoyed none but ordinary 
aids, who can advance no pretensions which others may 
not also challenge, is entitled to speak in the tone and to 
exercise the authority of a prophet or apostle, then what 
was the necessity of the extraordinary powers wherewith 
prophets and apostles were endowed ? A vast distinc- 
tion is there between the prodigious pretensions of the 
zealot demagogue and the modest expression of an indi- 
vidual judgment. 

Every minister of the Gospel is entitled to the same 
freedom of opinion and preference on all subjects as 
other men. Paraphrasing the language of Shylock, he 
may say : " I am a minister ; hath not a minister eyes ? 



* Isaac Taylor. 

JO 



218 



Thanksgiving. 



hath he not hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, 
passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same 
weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the 
same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and 
summer, as other men ? if you prick us, do we not bleed ? 
if you tickle us, do we not laugh ? if you poison us, do 
we not die ? and if you wrong us " — we will not add with 
the Jew, " shall we not revenge ? " but we will say, " shall 
we not show you how to bear it ? " This freedom of 
judgment allowed him, no minister has the right to pro- 
trude officially his private opinions and preferences in 
regard to matters which do not affect the sublime morali- 
ties of his vocation. Especially to indulge in personali- 
ties, in partisan advocacy or military criticisms in the 
pulpit, whatever right or liberty he may claim elsewhere, 
is a public scandal and wrong. It would seem to be the 
doctrine of some preachers, because they had certain 
opinions in regard to men and measures, therefore, they 
are bound on all occasions to avow them, going through 
the world, like the iron man Talus in the drama, with his 
iron flail battering down whatever opposes their private 
sentiments. The meanest thing which crawls on the earth 
is a man who, for his private advantage, will follow and 
cringe and swallow his own opinions ; but the noblest 
form of manhood is he who holds his personal opinions 
on things indifferent in reserve for the sublime end of 
another's advantage — as the Apostle himself has ex- 
pressed it : "I become all things to all men, if by any 
means I might save some " ; that nobility and grandeur 
of Christian motives imparting versatility of address, 
and deportment in the use of his varied faculties and 



Politics and the Pulpit. 2 1 9 

opinions, lest he should frustrate that object — the salvation 
of the soul, which was his disinterested and lofty intention. 

A fortunate thing it is for our country that its clergy 
of all denominations, unlike the clerical party of Conti- 
nental Europe, regarded with suspicion as enemies to 
liberty and progress, are known to be eminently patriotic, 
and as a body are possessed of the confidence and 
respect of the people. If the great events of our time, 
absorbing thought, and eliciting national energy ; events 
which are rapidly consuming hecatombs of lives and mil- 
lions of treasure, and threatening to involve the peace 
of the world, do not afford an occasion for the teachers 
of religion to lift up their voice in the name of God and 
humanity, then must we confess ourselves utterly unable 
to conceive of any conjunction of earthly interests to 
which Christian truth and motive are applicable.* 

To inaugurate war gratuitously ; to attempt to over- 
throw civil government, without adequate reasons, such as 
are sanctioned by God and man, as necessary and bene- 
volent, is a crime, which, measured by its consequences, 
makes all other crimes insignificant. This admitted, 
there are wars which are justifiable to Christian ethics. 

* The substance of this chapter, and of several which follow, 
was written during that tremendous civil war out of which we have 
so happily emerged. Believing that the principles here inculcated 
are of no ephemeral character, the writer retains every thing in its 
original and unaltered form, hoping that it may be of permanent 
service, as illustrating the manner in which the Christian ministry in 
the Loyal States, with few exceptions, were accustomed to instruct 
their congregations as to the religious rules to be observed in the 
several stages of this most eventful struggle. 



120 



Thanksgiving. 



" The magistrate/' says the word of God, " beareth not 
the sword in vain." It is to be wielded in defence of 
what is good, — for the conservation of a well-ordered 
society. It is not an inference, but the explicit assertion 
of Scripture, that government is God's ordinance, and as 
such must be obeyed, and those who do it violence must 
be smitten. An army is only the instrument of magis- 
tracy, the reduplication of official weapons. 

We are engaged in a contest for the conservation of 
our national existence, and in such a cause may appeal to 
something higher than honor — the aid and blessing of 
that religion which has given its sanction to lawful magis- 
trates and constituted governments. So long as this one 
object is kept in mind, distinct and unalloyed by malig- 
nant passions, we may leave our appeal with the Almighty, 
going forth to battle, with faith and prayer, for justice and 
humanity. What greater evil could befall — we will not 
say our own land, but all lands — than the success of 
ambitious and wicked men, misleading communities, drag- 
ging States into the vortex of war at their own passionate 
will, without rebuke or punishment ? 

Our country stands not in the rear but in the van of 
the grand army of nations. Behind us are great historic 
forces ; before us are great duties, great hopes, great 
destinies. The drama of History is not complete. We 
have our own peculiar work to achieve, and that work is 
related alike to the past and the future of the world. We 
are acting now, not merely for ourselves and our children, 
but in the interest of all contemporary nations, and in 
behalf of all the nations that ever shall be organized on 
the earth. The question now to be decided is — and there 



Politics and the Pulpit. 221 

is not an aspirant for freedom, nor an agent of despotic 
and irresponsible power in any part of the world, who 
does not watch the issue on the very tiptoe of expectation 
— whether any people are capable of self-government; 
whether the passions of men can be so curbed and moder- 
ated, that of their own accord free citizens will subject 
their private will to the public welfare, preferring the 
order and sanctity of law and government to personal 
ambition and private resentments ; whether a free, equi- 
table, and benignant government shall spread its protec- 
tion over all classes alike, or whether it shall be stricken, 
stabbed, revolutionized, and overthrown, for the pleasure 
and promotion of a few. 

Nor can we, if we would, blink the fact that we carry 
explosive problems in our own bosom, especially relative 
to that unhappy race on whose ebon faces the sad expe- 
rience of centuries has sculptured the cast of patient 
subjection. We know not a subject which has more 
points of contact and relationship with the proper prov- 
ince of the Christian ministry than the existing condition 
and prospects of the African race. First of all, he who 
questions the unity of the human race, by denying those 
bronzed in hue a place in the common brotherhood, aims 
a blow higher than he knows, at the very structure of 
Christianity. That there is one parentage, one race, one 
historic necessity, one and only one Redeemer for ail 
mankind, is the very alphabet of our creed. Then, again, 
comes in the doctrine of the New Testament, that while 
there is something better than liberty, even a relationship 
to Christ which lifts a human soul so high that it may be 
oblivious to the ordinary distinctions of earthly condition, 



222 



Thanksgiving. 



yet on the same authority we learn that freedom is better 
than slavery, and so is, if it may be, to be preferred and 
used. These things, we should say, are axioms in social 
and theological science. If it were our object to express 
ourselves in strongest terms on this subject, we would agree 
to confine ourselves to the language used by the fathers 
of the Republic, especially those who were personally 
related by birth and inheritance to a system which they 
pronounced and reprobated as a tremendous evil, social, 
political, and moral.* 

* Henry Laurens, for two years President of the Continental 
Congress, and afterwards appointed Minister to Holland, wrote to his 
son from Charleston, S. C, I4thx\ugust, 1776 : " You know, my dear 
son, I abhor slavery. I was born in a country- where slavery had 
been established by British kings and parliaments, as well as by the 
laws of that country ages before my existence. I found the Christian 
religion and slavery growing under the same authority and cultivation. 
I nevertheless disliked it. In former days there was no combating 
the prejudices of men supported by interest ; the day, I hope, is 
approaching, when, from principles of gratitude as well as justice, 
every man will strive to be foremost in showing his readiness to com- 
ply with the golden rule." — Collection of the Zenger Club, p. 20. 

Mr. Jefferson, when in France in 1786, in a note to M. Demeunier, 
whom he had furnished with copious materials for his article on the 
United States, about to appear in the great E}icyclopedie Methodique, 
uses this language : " What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible 
machine is man, who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment, 
and death itself, in vindication of his own liberty, and the next 
moment be deaf to all those motives whose power supported him 
through his trial, and inflict on his fellow-men a bondage one hour 
of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose 
in rebellion to oppose ! But we must await with patience the work- 
ings of an over-ruling Providence, and hope that that is preparing 



Politics and the Pulpit. 223 

Whether the conservation and extension of slavery be 
merely the pretext or the cause of the war ; whether any 
who originated the war can plead provocation in the form 
of fanatical acerbities, is not now the question in debate, 
though we cannot but regret that the temper which gov- 
erned our fathers, regarding this as a common concern, 
to be tolerated as a necessity for a season and removed 
as soon as it could be — a temper which was merged and 
blended in a blessed patriotism — was not continued and 
perpetuated ; though we often frame to ourselves a picture 
of what this country might and would have been if all its 
different sections could have looked and acted* on this 
subject in the charitable spirit of a family community of 
interest and honor, and a small portion of the immense 
treasures now expended in war could have been fairly 
appropriated for the removal of the mischief ; yet so it 
was not to be. Our regrets cannot recall the past, and 
the issue is made and joined. This war is not, in our 
interpretation and intention, for the abolition of slavery, 
though that event is involved in its issue. The responsi- 
bility of such an issue is with those who inaugurated the 
war, not unwarned of its inevitable consequences. The 
contest on our part is for the conservation of the national 

the deliverance of these our suffering brethren. When the measure 
of their tears shall be full ; when their groans shall have involved 
heaven itself in darkness — doubtless a God of justice will awaken to 
their distress, and, by diffusing light and liberty among their oppres- 
sors, or, at length, by his exterminating thunder, manifest his atten- 
tion to the things of this world, and that they are not left to the 
guidance of a blind fatality." — Jefferson's Writings, vol. ix. pp. 278, 
279. 



224 Thanksgiving. 



life, and the preservation of that constitutional govern- 
ment which, under God, is the only barrier between us 
and universal chaos. We know of nothing between us 
and that object which should obstruct our end. We 
intend to love nothing, conserve nothing, consult nothing, 
occupying intermediate ground between us and the life, 
honor, and constitution of the country. Whatever inter- 
poses itself between us and that grand and sacred end 
which religion sanctions, must take care of itself. 

Lift high the bright banner which symbolizes Unity, 
Constitutional law, National honor and integrity, dearer 
to us now that the blood of our citizenship has sanctified 
every fold and star. Avoid every suspicion of political 
jealousy and ambition. Weaken not the " red right arm " 
of magistracy by suffering party rivalries to invade our 
armies. The very animals in the time of a deluge, seek- 
ing refuge in the same caves, forgot their ancient anti- 
pathies. Common dangers, common sufferings, common 
necessities, ought to unite us at that point where unity is 
essential to the preservation of life. 

Whatever comes to pass, let us hold ourselves firm in 
the faith that there is an essential difference between what 
is right and what is wrong, between good government and 
wild revolutions, and as God lives, that which is right 
will ultimately prosper. The future is hid from our inspec- 
tion. No words of empty boast or defiance have we in 
regard to menaces from across the sea. We are neither 
over-sensitive nor indifferent. Willing or unwilling, all 
nations are related by manifold bonds which mountains 
and oceans cannot destroy. What is of real and perma- 
nent value to us as a nation, will prove the same to all 



Politics and the Pulpit. 225 

other nations in the end. We are very calm and confident 
as to the final issue. Intermediate suffering there may 
be, perhaps beyond all which we have ever imagined. 
The fires may wax hotter which Heaven shall see to be 
needful to burn up our dross and weld us into a purer 
and firmer nationality. 

Hilarity is not becoming the hour of suffering, but 
cheerfulness is, and patriotism, and hope and love and 
faith in God. What a day will that be, when prejudice, 
passion, and falsehood shall all disappear; when there 
shall be no more occasion for war, because there is no 
more of lawlessness and crime ; when there shall be no 
breaking in nor going out ; when there shall be no more 
complaining in the streets ; when the deepest of all ques- 
tions, underlying the relations of employers and employees, 
the question of races, shall be solved in the harmony and 
love of the latter day ; when all the cities which gem the 
shores of the sea, and all the valleys and cottages which 
brighten the landscape of our beautiful country, shall be 
cheerful with the music of industrial freedom ; when con- 
fidence and goodly fellowship shall displace suspicion, 
rivalry, and jealousy; when Peace, with her olive-boughs 
and dove-like tones, shall bless the land, and all the 
people shall go up to the temples of religion with their 
songs of melody, thanksgiving, and praise. The Lord 
grant it in His own time ! 



CHRISTIAN PATRIOTISM. 




Pray for the peace of Jerusalem : they shall prosper that love 
thee. Peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palaces. 
For my brethren and companions' sakes, I will now say, Peace be 
within thee. Because of the house of the Lord our God I will 
seek thy good. 




Ps. 122 : 6-9. 



XI 



CHRISTIAN PATRIOTISM 



I see not how any man of ordinary sensibility can 
read, intelligently, the; 12 2d Psalm, known as a song of 
degrees — a chant for the going up to the Holy City — with 
a full comprehension of its origin, import, and use; re- 
calling .the scene as it was, on a bright Sabbath of the 
Spring or Summer, the tribes of Israel coming down from 
the slopes of the mountains round about Jerusalem, and 
coming up from the glens of the vine and the olive, flow- 
ing together in their multitudinous processions towards 
their sacred city and the House of God, singing aloud in 
the open air, fragrant with the scent of the rose, and 
musical with the hum of bees ; joining in full-voiced 
chorus as the gates were . passed — " Our feet are standing 
within thy gates, O Jerusalem — whither the tribes go up, 
the tribes of the Lord, to give thanks unto the name of 
the Lord," — I cannot see how one can catch the full in- 
spiration of such a scene, and such words, without having 
his eyes suffused, and his heart dilated with high and 
grand emotions. When we analyze the Psalm itself, we 
find it embodies two great sentiments— Religion and 
Pati'iotis?n ; or, to express the truth more accurately, 



2 3° 



Thanksgiving. 



these sentiments which, under analysis, appear distinct 
and several, are here combined and blended into one 
great emotion of religious patriotism ; the love and wor- 
ship of God promoted in the hearts of Israel's tribes by 
the memory of what God had wrought for their country ; 
and that country made a thousand-fold dearer to them 
all because it was the seat of the house of the Lord their 
God ; the abode chosen above all others upon the earth 
for the display of His majesty, and justice, and mercy. 

This Psalm harmonizes so perfectly into one feeling 
the love of God and the love of country, that it has been 
preserved in the treasures of inspiration, not as a dead 
relic of a dead and forgotten generation, but as an incite- 
ment and an expression of those high-toned emotions 
which ought to characterize all Christian Patriots. 

When I think that he who has determined to establish 
a kingdom of his own upon the earth — a kingdom whose 
brightest regalia are righteousness, and love, and joy — a 
kingdom for whose coming we are taught to pray every 
morning and evening of our lives ; when I remember that 
He who has ordained the end has also ordained the 
means and the instruments ; that if there is to be a church 
in the world then there must be a world continued and 
established, to be at once the theatre of its action, and 
the subject of its power; that a prosperous, social state, 
with all the elements of happy civilization, just laws, 
established order, government gentle but strong, is not 
only a result wrought by religion, but the opportunity for 
religion to develop itself and work unmolested and un- 
hindered ; that the chief evil attendant upon all systems 
of despotism or states of anarchy and revolution, is, that 



Christian Patriotism. 



they accumulate obstacles in the path of Christianity, 
and that the grandest result of all true liberty is, that, 
under its auspices, the Word of the Lord has free course, 
and is glorified ; that the Gospel is preached with great- 
est success, and the churches thrive, and multiply, when 
the civil power is so administered that we can " lead a 
quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty," — 
as I take into view all these facts and truths, then patriot- 
ism becomes impregnated with a new motive, redeemed 
from all association with that cheap and vulgar quality 
which is so much eulogized in vapid declamation, and 
wedded to religious ideas — learns to sing as in the sacred 
Psalm, " Because of the house of the Lord our God I 
will seek thy good." 

The love of country, in times of trial and peril, needs 
to be invigorated and exalted by that class of motives 
which can be drawn only from our religion. 

*At this very hour we are passing through scenes, 
which, for suffering and terror, we had supposed belonged 
only to the historic past. The sea has " wrought and 
is tempestuous." We are engaged in what has always 
been regarded as the saddest of all national calamities — 
a civil war. No Roman general, victorious in civil strife, 
ever received a public ovation such as was allotted to 
him who conquered a foreign foe ; since, in his case, the 
success of duty was best honored by sad and reverent 
silence. Things which we have read of with pale lip, as 
occurring in other lands, have actually come upon our- 
selves, and men's hearts are failing them for looking for 
those things which are coming to pass. Thoughtful men 

* Vide note, p. 219. 



Thanksgiving, 



fear more than they utter. From causes which I need 
not attempt to describe, multitudes have fallen into de- 
spondency and gloom. Should this temper become 
prevalent, it would realize at once the worst mischiefs 
that ever have been imagined. What is needed now is 
a generous cordial of confidence and hope, stimulating 
the body politic into a state of tonic life, superior to all 
the depressions and dumb agues of temporary and local 
causes. And this can be administered only in one way. 
We need, at this moment, a large infusion of religious 
patriotism. We need to be lifted up to loftier concep- 
tions of our nationality, as related to the providence of 
God in the progress of His eternal kingdom. I fear that 
too many frame their predictions and shape their conduct 
from the fluctuations of the Stock Exchange, and the 
reports of the daily bulletin. W T e must plant our feet on 
firmer ground than this, and lift up our eyes to higher 
objects. The events of a single day are but a brief pa- 
renthesis in the roll of historic ages. The stars above 
us are all in their places ; the ordinances of heaven are 
established in their faithfulness. God is on the throne, 
and heaven and earth shall pass away before one jot or 
tittle of His Word shall fail of its fulfilment. Far above 
all that is personal, or sectional, or partisan, oblivious 
to the petty differences of the hour, burying all subordi- 
nate questions of detail, emulating the high-souled deeds 
of our fathers, possessed of a magnanimous conception 
of our entire Christian nationality, as essential to the 
welfare of all races — Saxon, Kelt, African — black or white 
— to the interests of religion, to all the hopes of human- 
ity in every portion of the globe — to the thousandth gen- 



Christian Patriotism. ' 233 

eration — far above and out of sight of all measures, 
mistakes, and successes of an hour — up and up must we 
rise, planting our feet on ultimate truths, standing stead- 
fast and immovable in religious faith, " encouraging our- 
selves in the Lord," as did David amid the perils and 
disasters of Ziklag, and chanting our psalm above the 
voice of the storm. When Paul and his companions in 
their leaky ship were driven and tossed by the Eurocly- 
don, his object was not to save the ship, but the lives of 
all she carried. Tossed and driven by this tempestuous 
wind, our purpose and endeavor is not to save ourselves 
— each for himself — but to save the ship freighted with 
such a priceless wealth. No one must be suffered to 
leave the ship, letting down a boat into the sea, and flee- 
ing stealthily, as though they would do something about 
the bow : no one must be planning how to construct a 
raft out of the broken pieces of the ship when she has 
fallen apart : if the ship is among shoals and breakers, 
she must be saved : " better that we had not loosed from 
Crete and gained this harm and loss ; " but let regrets 
and recriminations go by us now on the gale: every man 
must be at his post : let us unite our strength and wis- 
dom : try every expedient, undergird the ship, shift her 
sails, take refreshment after a long abstinence, be of good 
cheer, and instead of running her aground, strike for the 
deep sea — bear off from dangerous shoals and soundings 
— make her strong, and tight, and staunch, from truck to 
keelson, instinct with life, obedient to her wheel ; so shall 
she save all who sail in her, and accomplish the voyage 
for which she was built, launched, and out-fitted. 

There is a patriotism which is chiefly an unthinking 



23 4 Thanksgiving. 

impulse, made up of memories and associations local to 
the soil where we began our existence — a natural affection, 
which has in it not one element of a religious quality. 
Were I asked to describe that love of country which is 
engrafted upon a religious stock, that compound affection 
which is illustrated in the inspired ode, used once and 
intended to be used always in public national worship, I 
should say, first of all, that it implies an intelligent com- 
prehension of one's country as related to Supreme Provi- 
dence, to the development of His historic plan, with 
reference to redemption and His one immortal kingdom. 
That which we have found to be wise in regard to our 
personal life and duty — fix the centre from which all acts 
should proceed and to which all acts should return — we 
are told is wisdom concerning the life of nations and the 
dramatic history of the world. This world does not 
swing in empty space, a dead, iron pendulum ; God is its 
Author, and Governor, and Life ; and all things, past, 
present, and future of our globe, are ordained in the in- 
terest and for the promotion of the kingdom of his Son. 
On a ten-inch globe or map representing our earth, you 
do not expect to find every lane of a city, or every creek 
of the country, but only a general outline of the world's 
configuration. We are not competent to decide upon 
every event, minute and episodical, how it is related to 
the grand unity of history, but we do know, because in- 
structed by divine infallibility, that all things were made 
by Christ and for Christ ; that He who ruleth among the 
nations lifteth up one and casteth down another, with 
reference to that kingdom which is everlasting and to 
that dominion which endureth throughout all generations. 



Christian Patriotism. 



2 35 



It is the root and foundation of our belief, that all the 
scenes of life's theatre are shifted with reference to the 
one drama which defines the object of the world's crea- 
tion. It is on this root that our patriotism is grafted, and 
from this vital sap that it draws its sustenance. The 
love of our country grows intense, when we measure our 
nationality as related to that kingdom of Christ which is 
paramount, permanent, and universal. The Bible, in its 
historic parts, instructs us how the true life of all nations, 
from the beginning, was ordered in connection with the 
advent of Him who was the Desire and Hope of the 
world. This historic chain was not broken when revela- 
tion was closed, nor was Christ's rule over the nations 
terminated, when the pages of the Apocalypse were 
ended. He reigns now — and will reign forever. And 
this land of ours — its peculiar nationality — both are dear 
to us, more dear than words can express, because the 
product of historic forces in which we see and adore the 
hand of our Lord. To enhance the estimate of our na- 
tionality — we would repeat the brave chronicles of the 
past ; we would lead you through the long galleries of 
recorded events, good and great ; recall reformations and 
revolutions which had a soul in them because born of 
love and duty and right : we would tell of up-heavings in 
the old world, of religious assertions and religious lib- 
erty ; our own continent shut out and reserved till the 
right crisis ; the exodus of our ancestry inspired and 
guided by an educated religious conscience ; of the melt- 
ing away and disappearance of savage tribes — the pos- 
session of a new hemisphere by a new order of men ; of 
a church ransomed and free from all political alliance — a 



2 3 6 



Thanksgiving. 



church reformed and untrammelled in soul and limb ; of 
liberty regulated by law ; of institutions established by 
the people for self-government, self-protection, and self- 
improvement. We would repeat the old but never stale or 
wearisome story of the Constitution, the Union, our great 
and blessed nationality : as the fire kindles at the memo- 
ries of the past and the hopes of the future— hopes iden- 
tified with civilization, liberty, and religion throughout 
the earth — hopes which are the fruits of a long, long, and 
patient growth — the purchase of avast and costly price, — 
standing on this high summit, we find no place nor pos- 
sibility for despondency ; in possession of such a heri- 
tage, there cannot be a thought of throwing it away, or 
allowing it to be torn from us, or pausing to ask what it is 
worth, for it is above all price ; and so our patriotism, 
inspired and interpenetrated by our religion, takes up its 
cheerful Psalm : " Peace be within thy walls, and prosper- 
ity within thy palaces : because of the house of the Lord 
our God I will seek thy good." 

And it is in this connection, in this chain of provi- 
dential events, that we would religiously recall and honor 
the name and services of that great and good man who, 
by common consent, is recognized as the father of his 
country — the first President of our Republic, the founder 
and the representative of our free institutions. It is no 
common eulogium on such a man, that you cannot speak 
of his magnanimous patriotism, nor recall his words of 
warning and wisdom at the beginning and at the end of 
his public services, more especially the " pathos, grand- 
eur, and parental love " of his Farewell Address, when, 
like Moses at Pisgah, with a bright vision of the future 



Christian Patriotism. 



of his country, he gave his Deuteronomic counsels ; you 
cannot do this without consciously or unconsciously fram- 
ing a lesson, the very best for any times through which 
we are passing. We deprecate every thing which approx- 
imates to hero-worship, or exalting man as our trust and 
law • but we would shun, also, with earnest care, every 
thing like indifference to the gifts of God, especially the 
lives of men good and great, men of Providence, as they 
may be called, designed to be lights in the world, and 
safe interpreters of duty. Here is a name identified 
with our nationality ; a name which never can be divided 
and subdivided into parcels to be distributed among dis- 
membered States ; the common property of the whole 
nation, and the symbol of that spirit by which our na- 
tionality must be preserved and perpetuated. We can- 
not recite the story now in detail ; our children know it 
already, and their children and children's children will 
not forget it ; for in his life and services, history had 
reached a new epoch, humanity a new development. I 
have said already, that a recital of what he was, and said, 
and did, was in itself a discourse for the times. The 
story of his peculiar training, the qualities of the Strip- 
ling foreshadowing the virtues of the man ; his preserva- 
tion from dangers for a signal service for his country ; 
exemplifying the true republican virtue of the olden time ; 
offices seeking him, and he never seeking office for him- 
self ; honest, patient, and magnanimous, emulous of 
saying the country rather than winning the fame of a 
brilliant soldier ; sure to win by Fabian wisdom, rather 
than risk every thing by hurling a column on needless 
danger ; practising self-control greater than the taking of 



Thanksgiving. 



cities, when misunderstood and well-nigh sacrificed by 
military rivalry and political cabals ; showing Christian 
greatness in a willingness to serve rather than an ambi- 
tion to rule ; instructing the country at the beginning and 
at the end, as one who believed and felt that our de- 
pendence was on Divine Providence, and that the founda- 
tions of our institutions were laid in morality and relig- 
ion ; emphasizing, with the voice of a Hebrew Prophet 
or Christian Apostle, the philosophic truth, that the for- 
mer could not exist without the sanctions of the latter ; 
warning, first and last, against party spirit, and sectional 
jealousy, and geographical preferences ; entreating, as a 
father doth his children, each and all, by mutual forbear- 
ance, to study the things which would edify the whole ; — 
as all this passes in review, we feel die glow of an as- 
sured confidence that the lesson of such a life was never 
intended for an hour, then to be swallowed up in chaos ; 
for it is a sign and pledge of a future deliverance and 
greatness, the model of a future conformity. Nor can 
any man recount a tithe of such a record, without ex- 
claiming, Oh, for one day of such a spirit now : oh, for 
one pulse, strong and brave, throughout this whole land, 
of that true, loyal, " sweet, cherished, hereditary " Ameri- 
can sentiment which filled his honest heart : one more 
Farewell Address, inspired by wisdom and love, and lis- 
tened to by all the people throughout all our borders, 
in reverent gratitude, ere he passed from the sight of 
man. 

" Being dead, he still speaketh ; " and the gift of such 
a Moses is itself a pledge for the ultimate triumph of 
those principles which were represented and inculcated 



Christian Patriotism. 



2 39 



in his life. We delude no man with the false promise of 
a smooth, speedy, and easy vindication of our nationality. 
Every reason have we to suppose that it will be with us 
as with the people of Israel, in their education for their 
high destiny. They expected a quick and a short passage 
into the land of promise. So have we. They were im- 
patient of obstacles and murmured aloud because of 
delays. So have we. They were to be forged and 
hammered into shape and strength. So are we. There 
are enemies, many and strong, hanging on our flank and 
rear; there is a sea, deep and wide, stretching itself 
across our path ; Miriam and Aaron, the brother and 
sister of the nation's head, have proved disloyal, detach- 
ing themselves from their true leader ; the High Priest 
himself has joined in with idolatries by which a host have 
been seduced ; Korah, Dathan, and Abiram have incited 
a multitude of the people into bold rebellion ; the waters 
which once were for refreshment have been turned into 
bitterness ; Balaam has been summoned in God's name 
to curse Israel ; spies have come back bearing an evil 
report to intimidate and deter, by false stories of giant 
foes and high fortresses : — but above us, around us, be- 
hind us, is a Power mightier than all, bearing us onwards, 
always onwards, in suffering and chastisement, onwards 
still, towards a promise which God has given. That 
household murmuring and disloyalty will be shamed and 
punished, even though it be not by the curse of leprosy ; 
that idolatry will be repressed and reformed, and they 
who have practised it will be made to drink the ashes of 
the calf they have worshipped ; that rebellion led on by 
the very kinsman of Moses will be subdued ; some divine 



240 



Thanksgiving. 



branch of sweetness will be cast into the bitter fountains 
of Meribah ; Balaam, in spite of himself, will be compelled 
to utter a blessing instead of a curse — " How goodly are 
thy tents, O Jacob, and thy tabernacles, O Israel ; " the 
disheartening report of the spies will be stilled by the 
strong voice of Caleb, saying, " Let us go up at once 
and possess it, for we are well able to Overcome it and 
though there is between us and the promised possession, 
a river, deeper, swifter, redder than the Jordan ; though the 
time be long and weary, even many years \ though Moses 
and Aaron may die, and many a soldier and priest may 
not see that for which he has fought and prayed ; though 
a whole generation, because of their unbelief, shall be 
buried in the wilderness ; — yet that river will be crossed, 
and the nation will go over dry-shod, bearing the ark of 
God with them • and on the other side, the wilderness 
behind them, that vindicated nationality, that Christian 
Imperialism, will rear its monuments with the very stones 
taken out of the flood, and all the hills and valleys shall 
echo the songs of peace and universal thanks to God 
Almighty. 

A very defective notion of religious patriotism should 
I present, if I failed to say that tire very tap-root of all 
Christian love for the country, is a principle of obedience 
to God. In stating the truth on this part of my subject, 
we come in contact immediately with that question which 
defines the issue now before our country in this critical 
hour, involving not our welfare alone, but inevitably the 
peace and welfare of the whole world. That question 
relates to the duty of citizens to the civil government of 
the country ; a subject so important as to be made the 



Christian Patriotism. 241 

topic of frequent teachings by the Christian Apostles. 
The doctrine of the New Testament is briefly this : 
Government is an ordinance of God. It comes not by 
chance ; it is not an invention of man ; but an absolute 
necessity ordained by the Almighty, and as such is to be 
obeyed. "The powers that be are ordained by God," 
and whosoever resisteth this power resisteth the ordi- 
nance of God. So essential to the existence of society 
is government, in some form, that as religious men we 
are required by inspired authority to be subject to it, not 
only " from wrath " and compulsion, but for conscience- 
sake — through the power of a religious principle. 

This doctrine of the Christian Scriptures is not for a 
moment to be confounded with those monstrous preten- 
sions of tyrants, which allow no kind of protest against 
wrong, and forbid all attempts to reform and improve 
government itself by proper modes. Christian principles 
there are which, in certain cases, justify and necessitate 
the substituting of one form of government for another ; 
and all admit that there have been revolutions, and may 
be again, which are sanctioned by religion. But no one 
of whom I ever heard, has ever pretended that the govern- 
ment established by the common consent of the country, 
benignant, just, and gentle, as we have thought it, was so 
despotic in its sway, so utterly subversive of all the ends 
for which government is instituted, or so stricken through 
and through with evils mortal to social order, that it be- 
came a necessity imposed by benevolence and religion, 
that it should be violently overturned. 

There has sprung up in our country — and the mischief 
is not confined to any one parallel of latitude or longitude — 
11 



Thanksgiving. 



— a doctrine assuming the specious name of " ultimate 
convictions," — which, reduced to simpler terms, means the 
opinions and preferences of individuals — which claims to 
be superior to all civil law, an authority higher than the . 
constituted government of the country. There is a law 
of conscience — I speak of conscience well instructed, 
a dial set on a true meridian to the sun— which never 
should be treated with a slight. Whenever human gov- 
ernments require that of any man which an intelligent, 
honest, religious conscience pronounces to be wrong in 
the sight of God, the conduct of the Christian Apostles 
instructs him how to shape and decide his conduct. If 
his testimony for truth compels disobedience to the civil 
authority, he must bear the reproach of God patiently and 
firmly ; taking the consequences of his fidelity — suffering 
and death — upon himself in proof of his constancy to truth ; 
knowing that his martyrdom will be the means by which 
that truth will ultimately prevail. But no citizen is justi- 
fied, on Christian principles, in being a seditionist • striv- 
ing to overthrow God's ordinance in government, simply 
for the gratification of his personal preference or passion. 
For consider, if the will, conviction, partiality of one indi- 
vidual is to be his supreme law, then the will and convic- 
tion of his neighbor, which are diametrically opposite to 
his own, are ultimate authority to him ; and who shall 
arbitrate between them ? What shall prevent violent 
shocks and collisions ? Your political thesis resolves 
itself into this : " every man does what is right in his own 
eyes." Society is at once dissolved into anarchy, and 
physical strength alone decides who and what shall be 
ascendant. We cannot magnify unduly this ordinance 



Christian Patriotism. 



243 



of God, a benignant government for our protection : and 
there is nothing at this hour between us and the surges 
of an angry ocean, but the Constitution which we have 
accepted as framed, adopted, and transmitted by our 
fathers. We have launched our earthly all upon the ex- 
periment of self-government, believing that governments 
are for the good of the people, and not the people for the 
pleasure and profit of the government. There is no need 
of inquiring into the original condition of the contracting 
parties ; we need not confuse ourselves with theories 
concerning the sovereignty of the several States ; since 
the people of all these separate communities, with wonder- 
ful unanimity, framed to themselves a certain form for 
the administration of government — "for a more perfect 
union, to establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, 
provide for the common defence, promote the general 
welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty " — compacted 
themselves by a solemn agreement and covenant, estab- 
lished it in good faith, and confirmed it by provisions and 
oaths ; a form of government never claiming to be perfect, 
but self-adjusting, presenting the mode of its own safe 
and pacific correction, through the legal and orderly 
processes of legislation, judiciary, and convention, by 
which needful changes should be made, and wrongs re- 
dressed, and improvements accomplished ; and surely we 
shall search long before we find any ethical rule which can 
justify any party, however free and sovereign they may 
claim to be, breaking away from a compact into which 
they freely entered, simply on the ground of disgust with 
the result of a popular election, which they themselves had 
ordered to be held, and into which they had themselves 



244 



Thanksgiving. 



entered as active participants. The question thrust upon 
us, is, not whether we can consent to the loss of a certain 
portion of our national domain ; but whether we can, or 
ought to, consent to the destruction of our national exist- 
ence. If a chain composed of many links is broken in 
one place, it may be in another, and soon it will be 
detached into as many parts as there were links in its 
first composition ; and, this principle admitted, I see not 
what can save us from universal dissolution and chaos. 
I have revolved it much and long, in study by day and 
in watches of the night, and I cannot solve the problem, 
how, with such a doctrine of private preference, and ulti- 
mate convictions, protruded, allowed, and armed, we can 
ever be saved from the horrors which drenched the soil 
of France in blood, and rocked it to and fro with explosive 
revolutions. So that, in the providence of God, we are 
thrown back inevitably upon the maintenance of our 
nationality, not in pride or ambition, but for self-pre- 
servation — the only barrier which keeps out the waves of 
the sea ; and thus our patriotism draws its vigor at last 
from the law of obedience to God. 

All collateral issues aside, biding their own place and 
time, the question which we are called to settle, not for 
ourselves only, but for a waiting and troubled world, is 
the possibility of a self-governed nationality. Our failure 
has been predicted ; by many desired ; some have laughed 
at our institutions, saying, if a fox should but scale the 
wall, it would tumble. Meanwhile, with God's favor, our 
experiment has worked so well, and prospered so wonder- 
fully, that it has reacted prodigiously on the Old World ; 
reforms have been begotten of our success ; and hoary 



Christian Patriotism. 



2 45 



despotisms have acknowledged and feared the effect of 
our institutions. There is not a crowned head in the 
world who has not heard the name of Washington, nor 
any people struggling for freedom who have not been 
cheered and encouraged by our example. Fond hopes 
would die all over the earth, if the experiment we have 
commenced should end so soon in disaster. Freedom 
would shriek in despair, if it should prove that our vast 
nationality had been dissolved, to gratify the will and 
ambition of an oligarchy. Every motive of self-preserva- 
tion, of humanity, of liberty, of religion, compels us to a 
most earnest expression of loyalty. We must honor 
Government ; we must stand firm on our Constitution, as 
the only security of property, freedom, and life. It is no 
time, when a ship is in mid-ocean, and struck by a hurri- 
cane, to attempt to take her to pieces and rebuild her on 
another model. Now is the time to prove the strength 
of her timbers, and, by our brave deportment, to show our 
confidence in our institutions and our God. "Let us 
gird up the loins of our minds, be sober, and hope unto 
the end." These inspired words well describe the temper 
by which, in such a time, we should be governed ; firm- 
ness, sobriety, and hope. It is sad to see the sufferings, 
anguish, bereavements, and deaths of the hour ; but it 
makes us sadder still to think of the future, if our failure 
should entail on coming generations transmitted hos- 
tilities, strifes, and woes. If the principle for which we 
are called to testify is good and right and religious, then 
its vindication is worth all which it may cost. The suf- 
fering we endure, because of it, is the price we pay in its 
honor. Our duty is stern and solemn, but how can we 



246 



Thanksgiving. 



avoid it ? It is Brutus delivering his own sons unto death, 
for the honor of law and magistracy. It is Abraham 
offering up Isaac at the summons of God. it is Jephtha 
sacrificing his own daughter, kissing her fondly as he con- 
signs her to doom, exclaiming : 

" I could not love thee, child, so much, 
Loved I not Honor more." 

It is the Christian law of vicarious suffering, according 
to which, all which is good and valuable is made sure 
only by the endurance of mediatory pains. If great truths 
are to be wrought out of our history, for the good of the 
world, the world must see how high an estimate is placed 
on them, by God and man, in the degree of suffering 
which is borne, in cheerful trust, for the sake of their 
vindication. Every thing small, selfish, corrupt, must be 
consumed out of us so as by fire. " As many as I love I 
chasten," says He who is Lord of the Church and King 
over the Nations. We may net prove ourselves worthy 
of immediate success ; the tide which seems to be rolling 
in and onwards may surge backwards for a season ; but 
truth will only gather force for a later swing ; the difference 
between right and wrong is essential, and God is pledged 
to the final triumph of the one, and the defeat of the 
other ; and we cannot have a firmer basis of confidence 
than this. Our wisdom, our duty, it is, to draw motives 
of conduct, not from the fluctuating events of the day, 
but from eternal verities, the stability of that Kingdom 
which never can be moved. It were easier to think of 
swinging the Alleghanies on their base, dividing the 
continent in another direction ; of turning the great rivers 



Christian Patriotism. 



of our land about, so as to run to another point of the 
compass, than to imagine the overthrow of those great 
laws which involve the ultimate welfare of our race, in 
the eternal kingdom of the Redeemer. That kingdom is 
not the mere decoration and support of governments and 
nations ; but governments, nationalities, law, liberty, all 
things sublunary, are for the never-ending and illimitable 
Kingdom of our Lord. Here, then, have we a standing- 
place, high and strong. The floods may lift up their 
waves, but the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth. Parts 
of His ways He has disclosed, to guide our feet and con- 
firm our faith. Patriotism is inspired by religion. Be- 
cause of the house of the Lord our God, we seek the good 
of our native land. We will honor God, and all His ordi- 
nances. We will pray for His protection, and seek for His 
blessing j grateful for what He has dene for our fathers, 
we will seek His favor on us and our children. Guided 
by His word, cheered by His promises, we will continue 
our march, hoping unto the end; knowing, beyond a 
doubt, that the world, under the power of its Maker, is 
rolling on towards universal love, peace, liberty, harmony, 
and joy. Nor is this a blind confidence, for God is with 
us only as we are with Him. And they who live in later 
ages of time, will take up the very Psalm which we chant 
to-day, and sing it with a thousand-fold better conception 
of its real meaning ; — delight in God, and in the land 
which the Lord our God giveth us. 

Our feet shall stand within thy gates, O Jeru- 
salem. 

Jerusalem is builded as a city that is compact 
together : 



248 



Thanksgiving. 



Whither the tribes go up, the tribes of the 
Lord, unto the testimony of Israel, to give thanks 
unto the name of the lord. 

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall 
prosper that love thee. 

Peace be within thy walls, and prosperity with- 
in THY PALACES. 

For my brethren and companions' sakes, I will 
now say, Peace be within thee. Because of the 
house of the Lord our God, I will seek thy good. 



LULL IN THE STORM. 




And while the day was coming on, Paul besought them all to 
take meat, saying : This day is the fourteenth day that ye have tar- 
ried and continued fasting, having taken nothing. Wherefore I pray 
you to take some meat ; for this is for your health : for there shall 
not a hair fall from the head of any of you. And when he had thus 
spoken, he took bread, and gave thanks to God in presence of them 
all ; and when he had broken it, he began to eat. Then were they 
all of good cheer, and they also took some meat. 




Acts 27 : 33-36. 



11* 



f 



XII. 



LULL IN THE STORM. 



In the first Book of the Eneid we have a description, 
in Virgil's liveliest manner, of a furious storm on the sea, 
by which the hero of his epic, with all his fleet, was 
brought nigh to destruction. Eolus and all his crew of 
winds had broken loose from their cave of rocks, and 
lashed the sea into foam ; nothing could stand before 
their boisterous rage ; the seams of the ship yawned, the 
oars snapped ; some of the vessels fell over into the 
trough of the sea, and arms, furniture, and men, washed 
overboard, were drifting about in the yeasty surf ; when, 
suddenly, Neptune lifts his placid head out of the deep, 
surveys the scene, sends back the winds to their prison, 
puts to rest the stormy billows, disperses the congregated 
clouds, brings back the sun, and creates a bright and 
blessed calm ; even as when sedition rages in a great 
city — this is the poet's own illustration — and a mob is 
raging through the streets, and stones and clubs are 
flying through the air, if by chance they should see some 
man, remarkable for his benevolence and wisdom, in- 
stantly they are still, giving him their attention, while he 
soothes their passions and counsels them to peace. This 



2 5 2 



Thanksgiving. 



poetic scene not inaptly illustrates the effect produced on 
all our minds by the return of this halcyon day of our 
American calendar.* It finds us in mid-ocean, contend- 
ing with angry gales and surges. We are conversant 
with the perils, the passions, the burdens, and the sorrows 
of a protracted war. Yet such are the memories and 
associations connected with the day, that we are not sur- 
prised to find the wondrous effect it has in hushing us 
into tranquillity and making us happy. Frequent are the 
occasions when fasting and lamentation are most becom- 
ing. Happy for us that such days have been observed 
by our ancestors, with a degree of earnestness and pa- 
tience that surprises us, their degenerate offspring. The 
learned Lightfoot has left us a record of the manner in 
which a Fast-Day was observed by the parliamentary 
Assembly of divines to which he was attached during the 
civil wars of England. "This clay," writes he, "we kept 
solemn fast in the place where our sitting is, and no one 
with us but ourselves, the Scotch Commissions, and some 
parliament men. First, Mr. Wilson gave a picked psalm, 
or selected verses of several psalms, agreeing to the time 
and occasion. Then Dr. Burgess prayed about an hour ; 
after he had done, Mr. Whittacre preached upon Isa. 
37 : 3, 'This day is a day of trouble.' Then, having had 
another chosen psalm, Mr. Goodwin prayed ; and after 
he had done, Mr. Palmer preached upon Ps. 25 : 12. 

* Written in the year 1864 — the gloomiest period of the war. 
In accordance with a felicitous suggestion, arrangements were made 
for a special observance of the annual Thanksgiving, that autumn, 
by the whole army, supplies most generous and abundant being sent 
to all the camps, by citizens at home. 



Lull in the Storm. 



253 



After whose sermon we had another psalm, and Dr. 
Stanton prayed about an hour, and with another psalm, 
and a prayer of the prolocutor, and a collection for the 
maimed soldiers, which arose to about 15^, we ad- 
journed till the morrow morning."* This, indeed, might 
be called " laboring in word and doctrine." "Other men 
labored, and we have entered into their labors." If there 
are times which call for depletion and humiliation, there 
are other times which demand cordials to stimulate, 
refreshments to strengthen. What a beautiful incident 
was that, when the apostle Paul, himself a prisoner for 
Christ's sake, stood on the deck of a drifting ship, in the 
stormy Adriatic, when " neither sun nor stars in many 
days had appeared, and no small tempest lay on them, 
and all hope that they should be saved was taken away, 
and there had been long abstinence from food, even fast- 
ing for fourteen days " — and addressed the crew in these 
words : " Sirs, ye should have hearkened unto me, and 
not have loosed from Crete, and to have gained this harm 
and loss. And now I exhort you to be of good cheer, and 
take some meat, for this is for your health ; for there shall 
not a hair fall from the head of any of you." And when 
he had thus spoken, he took bread, and gave thanks to 
God, in presence of them all. He whose counsel had 
been despised, he, in that black and tempestuous night, 
the ship pitching and rolling, giving thanks to God, in the 
presence of those despairing men, and persuading them 
to take food and be of good cheer ! 

Precisely this is what we are invited to do by the ap- 



* Lardner's Works, vol. 13, p. 19. 



2 54 



Thanksgiving. 



pointment of this day. It is a festival of gratitude, in 
the lull of a storm ; and we intend to take meat, give 
thanks, and be of good cheer. A smile comes to-day 
over the grim visage of war. The camp is converted 
into a domestic festival. The homestead sends of its 
plenty to the soldier in tent and trench. Let the hand 
loosen its grip, for a few hours, on sword and musket, 
and the snow-white flag float from every dwelling and 
every church, while for one day a whole nation devotes 
itself to the delightful occupation of fostering and ex- 
pressing sincere gratitude to Almighty God. 

To be thankful and happy when all is propitious and 
peaceful, implies nothing to our credit. The great art is 
to be cheerful and hopeful when affairs appear to be in 
perplexity and gloom. Among the many fantastic con- 
ceptions of our most prolific modern writer, Mr. Dickens, 
is a character whose passion it was to meet with troubles 
and disasters sufficiently serious to give something really 
creditable to the habit, on his part, of an irrepressible 
merriment. Once, according to the author, he was on 
the eve of finding what had been his ambition for a long 
time. That was when he emigrated to America, and 
sought a new home, in a new settlement, on one of our 
Western rivers, among sharpers and dirty politicians and 
bilious fevers and mud and bowie-knives and tobacco 
and fogs and swamps and braggings, and American 
eagles flying sky-high, and men sitting about as if their 
organs of observation were in their feet, tavern-brawls, 
commendations of slavery, bad whisky, and a lank, 
cadaverous, yellow, corpsy population who would insist 
on calling their town by the name of Eden — there at last 



Lull in the Storm. 



2 55 



it was that he began to indulge in some measure of self- 
complacency, because in such extremes of misery he was 
able to maintain his usual overflow of animal spirits. 
To be contented in the midst of peace, prosperity, and 
abundance, is a small virtue. The absence of content- 
ment in such circumstances, would, indeed, be a crime ; 
but something good and great is there, when a weak 
mortal v/restles, through the live-long night, with the 
angel who strives to give him* a fall, continuing his 
bravery, even when the sinews of his strength have been 
withered, and compelling the mysterious form to leave 
him a blessing, ere he relaxes his hold. 

In BoswelPs Life of Johnson, Mr. Wilkes is introduced 
as entertaining a company with the description of a ser- 
mon which he had heard in the Highlands of Scotland, in 
which the preacher inveighed with the utmost vehemence, 
for the space of two hours, against the evils of luxury, 
when there were not more than three pairs of shoes in 
the whole congregation. Appropriateness is the foremost \ 
rule of successful speech. Instead of picturing to myself 
a state of affairs remote and unreal, I intend to keep in 
mind a vivid impression of the actual condition of our 
beloved country. Were we inclined to a desponding and 
discontented temper, we might find material enough for 
complaint A civil w 7 ar, which for magnitude — the extent 
of territory which it covers, the number of combatants it 
involves — throws into shade every rival ; a national debt 
rolling up, within the space of four years, to a sum already 
equal to twice the number of all the inhabitants of our 
planet ; the graves which have been crowded with hun- 
dreds of thousands of the most vigorous youth of the con- 



256 



Thanksgiving. 



tinent, taken from the arts of peace, and from happy homes 
to a red and hasty burial ; the uncertainties and apprehen- 
sions which still attend our unadjusted strifes ; all these 
fmight be our chosen themes till our hearts were wrung 
[|with agony, but not one of them would be an appropriate 
topic for a day of gratitude, save as we can discern good 
evolved out of evil, the blackest clouds unfolding an edge 
of gold and crimson. Vain is the attempt to force mirth- 
fulness upon those who cannot forget the causes of grief 
and apprehension : a nobler art is that which, confessing 
the presence of great sorrows, can infuse into them the 
radiance and warmth of great consolations, and by a 
divine alchemy can extract material for gratitude out of 
the very dregs of bitterness. L et us look at_things, not 
as they might be, not as we wish them to be, but just as 
they are, in their complexity of good and evil, sweet and 
bitter ; and let us invite the blessing of Heaven upon a 
people, who, in the very throes and anguish of their trials, 
have more to excite their gratitude than any other nation 
beneath the smile of the Autumn's sun. Though our 
common mother, our honored country, mourns the loss of 
many children, she is not to us like Niobe, petrified in 
torpid despair, but, like many a mother whom we have 
seen exalted and ennobled by losses and trials, more 
tender, more generous, more fertile in all goodly intentions 
towards the living, by reason of her memories of those 
whom she has buried. We need not for a moment to be 
puzzled by the riddle of Samson : " Out of the eater came 
forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness," 
for, if we are wise to know and prove it, bees will be 
seen to swarm from out of the ribs of the dead lion, 



Lull in the Storm. 257 

making honey for us and our children, sweeter than any 
from the " thymy heaths " of Hymettus. Small claims 
has he to Christian bravery, who rejoices only when skies 
are bright and tranquil. " I will sing of mercy and of 
judgment," said the Psalmist ; and a mind properly at- 
tuned to their harmony, will discern material for religious 
joy amid the severities of Providence. 

There is one incident in Hebrew history which serves 
as a warrant for a special observance of an annual festival 
in "troublous times." Nehemiah, the governor of Jeru- 
salem^ was as little inclined, by natural disposition and 
circumstances, to hilarity as any man that could be named. 
The leader of an expedition designed to rebuild the pros- 
trate city, he was perplexed with care and trouble. San- 
ballat and Tobiah, the leaders of a rival and unfriendly 
colony, after they had tried taunts and insults, formed a 
confederacy with the Arabians and Ammonites, and took 
up arms against the patriotic band who were fortifying 
Jerusalem. As if these foreign stratagems and assaults 
were not trouble enough, the governor was pestered by 
dishonorable and traitorous persons in the city, who took 
advantage of the public distress to exact usury, and make 
exorbitant contracts. In these depressing circumstances, 
the wise ruler, fearing that the people would be disheart- 
ened, determined to try the effect of a little recreation 
and festivity. It seemed to him that they would all be 
the better for unstrapping the load of care, and invigo- 
rating themselves with the sweet cordial of religious joy. 
So this care-worn official issued a proclamation for a fes- 
tival. He bade the people to drop trowel and spear, 
provide themselves with branches of the pine, the palm, 



258 



Thanksgiving. 



and the myrtle, and enjoy a little season of cheerfulness 
and charity, hospitality and thanksgiving. " Go your 
way, eat the fat, and drink the sweet, and send portions 
unto them for whom nothing is prepared : for this day is 
holy unto our Lord : neither be ye sorry : for the joy 
of the Lord is your strength." This proclamation 
was issued on the eve of the " Feast of Tabernacles," 
and was intended to reestablish that ancient festival. 
This was originally of divine institution ; it had been 
long and happily observed by the Hebrew nation, through 
all the vicissitudes of their history, and it was intended 
to subserve very important ends in that illustrious com- 
munity. It was a festive occasion altogether. The time 
for its observance, corresponding to our October, was the 
most beautiful of the whole year — after the heats of the 
Summer solstice, and before the " former rains," the most 
favorable time for general travelling. The feast was held 
in and about the metropolis, whither all adult males 
resorted from the various tribes. The mode of its observ- 
ance was singularly picturesque. The people left their 
usual dwellings, and constructed tabernacles — hence the 
name — or booths and arbors, out of the "boughs of 
goodly trees," especially of the evergreen, so many varie- 
ties of which were found in Palestine. The whole court 
of the Temple, the roofs of the houses, the area of the 
streets, and the adjacent fields, were covered with 
these graceful structures. On the evening of the first 
day, there was an illumination, which threw a golden 
light over this most animated and joyous scene. The 
city wore the appearance of a camp, and yet not with 
the usual accompaniments of a camp — weariness and 



Lull in the Storm. 



watching and armed preparation ; all was hilarity and 
delight. Thither the tribes had come up, from the val- 
leys of corn, of milk, and honey, appearing before God 
in Zion. No more should it be said that heathenism 
alone had provided days of festive worship, for the 
" modest and reverent solemnities " of Israel had ap- 
pointed a season of joy, alike simple and pure, in utmost 
contrast with the bacchanalian orgies which resounded in 
the courts of Chemosh and Dagon, the insane laughter 
of Sidonian worship, and the monstrous pomps of Baby- 
lon and Egypt. Now was the hill of Zion fairly ablaze 
with pleasure and joy. The harp and the viol were heard 
in the land, the tab ret and the cymbal, stringed instru- 
ments and organs, and high above them all were the 
voices of a whole nation, chanting together those high- 
sounding psalms which had been prepared by their Poet- 
King. The waving of palms, the flush of joy overspread- 
ing every countenance, the choral music, conspired to 
make the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles the most remark- 
able among all the observances of men, for pure, well- 
regulated, and religious joy. 

What now was the intention of this national festivity ? 
Merely for the overflow of animal spirits ? Was it a pro- 
vision for general holiday, with nothing ulterior to the 
act of recreation ? Far from this. It had a definite ob- 
ject and meaning — chiefly to commemorate the earlier 
events of their own annals, even the time when their 
fathers dwelt in nothing but movable tents, the nomadic 
period of their history, when God brought them out of 
Egypt into their own goodly land. Conjoined with this 
act of commemoration, the feast was to testify gratitude 



2 6 o Thanksgiving. 



for the ingathering of the harvest ; to furnish an occasion 
for the reunion of friends, the interchange of hospitality, 
the bestowment of kindness on the poor, the widow, the 
orphan, and the stranger ; and, above all, to foster a spirit 
of nationality, by bringing together the different tribes, 
and so fusing down the rough edges of sectional prejudice. 
This great Hebrew nation was divided into several groups, 
quite distinct in several particulars, as to rights and 
inheritances, taking names from their several progenitors. 
As these, with their distinct geographical lines, bearing 
banners inscribed with various names and emblems, were 
brought together once in the year, to form acquaintance 
and interchange civilities, how certain was the effect of 
their natural festival to obliterate local interests, and to 
blend the many tribes into one strong sentiment and heart 
of nationality, in the use of the same songs, the expression 
of the same religious faith, and the joyful worship of one 
and the same God. 

Every civilized people has some festive custom by 
which to celebrate the ingathering of the harvest. 
What object is better fitted to produce gladness and 
praise ? The fruits and grains which are hustled about 
in markets and on the docks as if they were the most 
vulgar things, are not the product of human art, but the 
gift of a bountiful Father. How stupendous this miracle 
of abundance of food, provided by His hand, every year, 
every day, and several times in every day for every 
living thing ! Talk of miracles as belonging to remote 
ages in the past ! Behold this marvel of the revolving 
year. The work of the husbandman complete, Winter 
comes, and seals the earth in silence and cold. The 



Lull in the Storm. 



261 



streams are stiffened and still, the ground is hard as 
stone, and buried out of sight in masses of snow. The 
sleet and the hail are abroad, the birds have fled, 
and verily it seems as if nature were dead, and wrapped 
up, stiff and stark, in its white and glistening winding- 
sheet Weeks revolve, Orion and the Pleiades keeping 
watch, like angels at the sepulchre of Christ, when the 
icicles begin to trickle from the roofs of the houses, and 
the snow-bunting appears with its soft chirp, and the ice 
melts in the rivers, and the streams are free and frolic- 
some, and, as the sun ascends higher in his circuits, the 
green grass makes its appearance, and the winter-grain 
shoots up all over the fields, and the birch-leaves show 
themselves, and the " home-loving and divorceless swal- 
low " has come back to its haunts, the sweet violets are 
by the wayside, and the bright marigold in the green 
meadows, and the fresh earth yields itself gladly to the 
march of the plough, and the trench in the garden 
and the furrow in the field take to their bosom the sacred 
deposit of the seeds, and all the air is perfumed with the 
blossoms of the orchard, and the green blade of the 
corn is up, and men sleep and wake, knowing that it will 
grow without thought of theirs, by the mysterious life 
which God imparts to its every cell and tissue ; and Sum- 
mer comes with his fervent heat, and the dews distil, 
and the showers fall, and lo ! a continent is crowned 
with all kinds of grains and fruits ; the ground is teem- 
ing with its treasures, the soft wind of the west plays 
through the tresses of the corn, and skims over ten thou- 
sand acres of bending wheat; and soon Autumn has 
come, with its glorious pomp, its harvesting and its 



262 



Thanksgiving. 



plenty, and its imperial coronation of the year, and there 
is no stint to the munificence of our heavenly Father — 
bread enough and to spare in his great house. The eyes 
of all wait upon Him, and He giveth them their meat in 
due season- — the ox and the sheep, the ant and the bee, 
I the wild beast in the forest and the nimble squirrel, the 
sparrow and the pigeon darkening the sky with their 
swift and vast caravans, and men, women, and chil- 
dren, in great cities, in great armies, in great fleets, in 
the house, by the way, all over the earth, fed daily, 
hourly, by this vast miracle of an universal Providence. 
Well may the holy Psalm utter the words, Praise the 
Lord all the earth, ye dragons and all deeps, fire and 
hail, snow and vapor, stormy wind fulfilling his word, 
mountains and all hills, fruitful trees and all cedars, 
beasts and all cattle, creeping things and flying fowl, 
kings of the earth and all people, both young men and 
maidens, old men and children. Let them praise the 
name of the Lord, for His name alone is excellent — His 
glory is above the earth and the heavens. When Han- 
del's Messiah was first performed, in 1780, in London, 
the audience, exceedingly affected by the music in gen- 
eral, when the chorus began, " For the Lord God omnipo- 
tent reigneth," were so transported that all, the king not 
excepted, started to their feet, and remained standing 
till it was ended ; # and the world ought to be transported 
with delight as in harvest-songs they speak of the won- 
drous works of God, and abundantly utter the memory 
of His great goodness ! 



* Forbes' Life of Beattic 



Lull in the Storm. 263 

Next to the ingathering of the harvest, the event of 
the year which should elicit our liveliest gratitude is the 
preservation of our institutions amid all the commotions 
of the times, by the good providence of Him who bears 
up the firmament by no visible support The issue of 
our recent presidential election was watched with pro- 
found concern by multitudes at home and abroad. It 
was, in the intelligent judgment of many, as if the fate 
of republican institutions trembled in the scale, for all 
time and for all people. The decent and orderly manner 
in which the election was conducted, the promptness 
with which the minority, two millions of men, acquiesced 
in the decision of the majority, exceeding their own 
number only by some two or three hundred thousand 
voters, the tranquillity which instantly succeeded a most 
stormy agitation — has not only strengthened our own 
faith in our own institutions, but has presented before the 
w r orld a spectacle of sublime self-control which is entitled 
to more than a passing allusion, even a most considerate 
and philosophic analysis. 

An election is, by the very signification of the term, 
the putting forth of one's own will and preference. It is 
only in certain stages of civilization that such an expres 
sion of the individual will is tolerated or allowed. Let 
us not forget what toils and fermentations of history were 
necessary before that new phase of government was 
reached in which a whole people are permitted to make 
expression of their personal preferences in the adminis- 
tration of their own public affairs. 

According to the familiar proverb which we wrote, 
when children, in our copy-books, " Many men have many 



264 



Thanksgiving, 



minds." So long as men have distinct individuality, their 
wills must often work in opposite directions. Shake- 
speare makes one of the citizens, in Coriolanus, to say, 
" We have been called of many, the maity-headed multi- 
tude ; not that our heads are some brown, some black, 
some auburn, and some bald; but that our wits are so 
diversely colored ; and truly, I think, if all our wits were 
to issue out of one skull, they would fly east, west, north, 
south ; and their consent of one direct way, would be at 
once to all points of the compass."* Hence this great 
interpreter of nature reasoned that popular consenting — 
in other words, a government based on free voting — was a 
solecism and an impossibility. Beginning with his prem- 
ises, we reach a different result. We accept the first 
fact, as to the " many-headed multitude." The next fact, 
the logical inference from its freedom, we admit also ; 
and a very important fact it is, if any one would analyze 
and interpret rightly the working of our free republic, 
that there will always be some occasion for the expres- 
sion of different opinions and determinations. To ex- 
press this idea in a more homely phrase, there will always 
be something about which to quarrel. You meet it first 
in a country-town, in a parish-meeting. The thing in 
dispute is the building of a new school-house, the laying 
out of a new road, the location of the post-office. There 
being no imperial authority to direct, every man in the 
town, of course, has an eye on his own accommodation 
and his own property ; no one is willing to be wronged or 
incommoded ; and so parties are formed, and there is any 



* Coriolanus, Act 2, Scene 3. 



Lull in the Storm. 265 

amount of hard talking, and faction, and threatening; 
but the town-meeting comes about, the " selectmen " are 
on hand, a moderator is chosen, the votes are dropped, 
the decision is announced, and, with the exception of the 
few grumblers who are always threatening to move out 
of town, every body acquiesces in the result ; the village 
relapses into its wonted tranquillity, till somebody's will 
starts a new project, and the whole hive is roused again 
in the excited play of rival interests and preferences. 
This is precisely what we mean as essential to the idea 
of liberty, — the free working of divers wills. The same 
thing occurs, on a larger scale, in national affairs. So 
long as the nation is not dead, but alive, and in prog- 
ress and growth, it is a matter of necessity that there 
should be the putting forth of individual wishes and in- 
tentions, which, for noise and force of collision, is pro- 
portioned to the magnitude of the questions at stake and 
the interests supposed to be involved. Now it is a ques- 
tion of democracy as opposed to federal centralization • 
now it is the tariff; the rival claims of agriculture, com- 
merce, and manufactures ; now a national bank, and the 
removal of deposits to a national treasury ; now it is anti- 
masonry, now the colonization of the blacks, and now the 
abolition of slavery ; now it is the legalized suppression 
of intemperance, and now the forth-putting of native 
Americanism in opposition to all foreign influence, politi- 
cal or religious. So it ever has been, and so it always will 
be ; it is involved in the very conception of liberty, as 
represented in general suffrage, that there should be 
the free and unobstructed working of many wills, in every 
conceivable direction. From this freedom results parti- 
12 



266 Thanksgiving. 



sanship, in the working together of those who are of the 
same mind, and from the opposition of parties comes 
clashing, debate, noise, and all the varied measures which 
can be devised by which one party may carry the day 
against the other. So loud is the sound, so passionate 
the manner, so vehement in language and behavior, that 
those living in other countries, unused to such exhibitions, 
predict only one result — the overthrow of the government, 
a revolution terminating in bloodshed and universal an- 
archy. To all which there is but one answer, for such 
as disbelieve in free institutions : Danger is not in noise, 
but silence ; not so much from what comes out of men's 
mouths, as from that which is crowded down into their 
smothered hearts. The steam rushing and roaring from 
an open valve terrifies the timid by its frightful noise, but 
the escape is the sign of safety ; the peril is when the 
valves are shut, and the steam is pent up within the 
strained and banded boilers, and the boat shoots swiftly 
through the still waters ; then is the time to expect fatal 
explosions. We are not blind to the perils of liberty, for 
they are many and portentous ; but, in providing an 
antidote, you must not strangle liberty itself, nor forget 
that this is its essential quality — that there should be, 
throughout the whole mass, a free expression of the elect- 
ive will of all. Did you never watch, on a Summer's 
day, the gathering of two great clouds, in the west and 
the north ? Blacker and blacker do they roll up, with 
muttering thunders in their bosom, covering the face of 
the sky, when, suddenly, as they meet in mid-heaven, 
there drops one bright flash, so smooth in its descent as 
to excite the sense of the beautiful amid the terror of the 



Lull in the Storm. 267 

scene, followed instantly by one sharp, rattling volley, 
and then comes down the rain ; and when the clouds are 
emptied, the sun breaks out, and the meadows give forth, 
a goodly smell, and those masses of cloud hasten towards i 
the western horizon, exchanging their inky black for \ 
every brilliant hue, reflecting the glory of the setting 
luminary which they could not obstruct. Even so great I 
states and territories are agitated by great public ques- 
tions, affecting, as they believe, the welfare of the coun- 
try, the condition of posterity, and the prospects of the 
world ; every breath blows the fire of faction to an in- 
tensity of heat, like that of a furnace ; the press, the 
public meeting, are inflamed with passion, and such are 
the rumblings of the gathering hosts, and such the up- 
turnings of the " discolored depths " of the sea, that 
every foreign spectator anticipates the last spasms of the 
republic ; but the day of election has come, and these 
four millions and a half of men, all over the land, put 
themselves in motion, yet as decently as if going up in 
orderly procession to Sunday worship, armed with no' 
thing but those small pieces of white paper, which, one 
after another, are dropped into the ballot-box, 

" Soft and still 
As snow-flakes fall upon the sod, 
Yet swift to do a freeman's will, 
As lightning does the will of God." 

The sun goes down — the telegraph announces the result — 
the earth has neither exploded itself, nor dashed any 
other orb into fragments, but it wheels in quiet obedience 
to the centripetal force ; and a defeated minority, with no 



268 



Thanksgiving. 



change of opinion or will, practises conformity to the 
great law of constitutional morality — peaceful acquies- 
cence to the majority — that sacred sentiment for which 
we are now battling in the eye of the world. The habit 
is so familiar to ourselves, that we do not pause to reflect 
how sublime it is, what majestic developments both of 
conscience and intelligence it implies — this alliance of 
self-assertion with self-control — this utmost freedom of 
will with loyalty to the supremacy of law, order, and 
authority. 

Having said so much in the way of analyzing our 
own methods and vindicating our own habits, chiefly with 
reference to others, who do not understand us as we un- 
derstand ourselves, it is well, in review of these recent 
and pregnant scenes, to say something with reference to 
ourselves. In the advice we give, perhaps we shall be 
thought to resemble the impudent mountebank in the 
Tatler, who, when Britain was shaken by an earth- 
quake, advertised to the country-people certain pills for 
sale, which "were very good against an earthquake." 
Quite an absurdity, it may be thought, to prescribe for 
popular commotions and national ferments. But, beauti- 
ful and hopeful as is the play of free forces, seriously a 
national election, as now conducted, is a terrific trial of 
the national character. It is most devoutly to be wished, 
that we may never adopt it as our rule, "that all is fair in 
politics j " that there was less of that hyperbolical mode 
of speaking and writing previous to an election, which 
must be construed as a figure of speech to redeem it from 
the name of falsehood ; and that there was more of the 
calm candor which relies on sound argument rather than 



Lull in the Storm. 



269 



hard and tough expletives. The names which political 
parties have attached to each other, in this country, 
during the last thirty years, the like of which are used in 
no other country in the civilized world, are shocking to 
public decency ; and we need not be surprised, so long- 
as we apply them as familiar terms of description to our 
own " kith and kin," that we are regarded by foreigners, 
who have never visited our shores, as only removed a de- 
gree or two from the savages, whose grotesque nomen- 
clature we have imitated in our political designations. 

The very definition we have given of liberty, implies 
the necessity of weights and balances to check and coun- 
teract the fall swing of the will, lest it fly off into excess. 
Its natural tendency is to ambition, to pride, to self- 
glorification, to obstinacy of purpose : to make it safe, 
it must have a large infusion of that virtue for which 
neither the Greek nor Roman languages had a name, till 
the New Testament writers coined the new word, hu- 
mility ; that quality which, with no meanness, defers to the 
will of others, especially in graceful subordination to all 
rightful authority on earth and in heaven. Let us be 
grateful that there is in our land so much of intelligence, 
so much of educated conscience : our only peril for the 
future is involved in the inquiry whether we have enough 
of both to protect us from the assertion of self-will, in its 
manifold forms of dishonesty and corruption, ambition 
for. place and power and emolument. We are told that 
in Turkey it was a custom, when any man was the author 
of notorious falsehoods, to blacken the whole front of his 
house, so that an ambassador, whose business it is, in the 
words of Sir Henry Wotten, to " lie for the good of his 



270 



Thanksgiving. 



country," has had this mark set upon his house, when he 
has been detected in any piece of feigned intelligence 
that has prejudiced the government or misled the minds 
of the people.* Following this singular conceit, I have 
sometimes imagined what a curious effect would be pro- 
duced if all the habitations of our countrymen were 
painted in colors representative of the men who live in 
them. If all those who deal in falsehood and forgery 
pernicious to the public welfare had their houses black 
as falsehood itself, and those infected with jealousy and 
prejudice and envy had houses of sickly yellow ; and all 
ever suspected of enriching themselves at the public ex- 
pense were ensconced in houses green as the backs of 
our paper-currency ; and all addicted to fanaticism, ma- 
lignity, and revenge, had their houses crimson as blood ; 
while those only who practised a true candor dwelt in 
houses corresponding thereto — the very word signifying a 
pure whiteness — it is quite certain that we should have 
a good deal of polychromatic ornamentation, and a sort of 
architecture, if not too funereal, that would not be with- 
out its good effect on the morals of the country. 

To have a republic, you must have a community of 
good men ; since a republic, by its very terms, is the ag- 
gregate of individual wills. One of the sages of anti- 
quity, as the result of his political observation, has left 
on record this prescription, " Abs tine a fabis" ("Abstain 
from beans"). The reference is not to any article of 
dietetics ; but beans, white and black, being used by 
voters as we use printed ballots, Pythagoras meant that, 



* Addison, iv. 461. 



Lull in the Storm. 



271 



if one would maintain his peace of mind, he must not 
meddle with elections. This is no rule for an American 
citizen. Abstain from elections, and the republic falls 
to pieces, since its distinctive organization depends alto- 
gether on the expression, in some sort, of the elective will 
of those who are themselves the commonwealth. Grate- 
ful for past blessings and escapes, there is no lesson more 
pertinent, more important for future duty, than that good 
men, foregoing their apathy and reluctance, must charge 
themselves with care and responsibility towards the State, 
exercising their own choice intelligently, independently, 
decidedly, or there is but one alternative — the surrender 
of the country, through ever-recurring elections, to the 
greed, the venality, the selfishness of the multitude ; and 
that is an entombment of the republic from which there 
is no resurrection. 

But we will not dwell long enough even on this one 
word of caution to cause a shade of sadness on a day of 
gratitude. We have not been given up to destruction. 
We are not called to deplore reverses to our arms, but 
to celebrate past successes. Whatever opinions may 
exist as to policy and management, there was never a 
time when the purpose of the nation, God helping us, to 
defend its own life and maintain its own honor, was more 
general and more decided than at this very hour. Allegi- 
ance is a legal conformity, and may be compelled by out- 
ward force. Loyalty is an uncoerced and unbought grace, 
with true love in its heart, and so is patient and strong, 
ready to do or endure whatever will fortify and bless the 
country to which it clings with undying devotion. And 
surely, if ever there was a cause which might naturally be 



272 



Thanksgiving. 



supposed to draw towards itself the sympathies of all 
generous spirits in the world, and the blessing of God 
Almighty, it is the purpose of a free and benignant gov- 
ernment to preserve itself, and uphold the supremacy of 
law, and this with no vindictiveness or wrath, but with 
that calm repose which indicates the consciousness of a 
good cause, and power adequate to its accomplishment. 
For the first time in our existence as a nation, we have of 
late a coin bearing upon its face a religious sentiment — 
In God we trust. Brave old Latimer, more than three 
centuries ago, preached before King Edward the Sixth, 
on the happy issue of a new shilling, having for its in- 
scription the fine motto — Timor Domini fons vitce vel 
sapienticB — a sentence which, the preacher hoped, would 
be printed on the heart of the young king in choosing his 
wife and all his officers. If the sentiment now in com- 
mon circulation on our coin is but deeply impressed on 
the hearts of the nation, that God is our trust, we may 
be released from all vaticinations or apprehensions as to 
that future which still is veiled, assured that the final 
issue will be right. So let us take our meat in the lull 
of the storm, and be of good cheer, thanking God and 
taking courage. 



LIBERTY AND LAW. 



As free, and not using your liberty for a cloak of maliciousness ; 
but as the servants of God. 

I Pet. 2 : 1 6. 



12* 



XIII. 



LIBERTY AND LAW. 

The period of Hebrew history which followed the 
death of Joshua is described as one in which " every man 
did that which was right in his own eyes." Though the 
incidents which illustrate this state of anarchy are record- 
ed in the appendix of the Book of Judges, and not at its 
beginning, with which they synchronize, yet it is agreed 
by the best chronologists, Jewish and Christian, that the 
incidents themselves took place in the year 1406 b. c. 
The exodus of the Hebrew people from Egypt, under 
Moses, was in the year 1491 b. c. Then was it that 
Moses and all Israel chanted that song upon the shores 
of the Red Sea, which will stand to the end of time, like 
a monumental shaft, in honor of a great deliverance. 
Subtracting the one date from the other, we are surprised 
to find how nearly the result corresponds to the space 
which separates the Declaration of American Independ- 
ence in 1776 from the present time. 

It seems to us incredible that a people so distinguish- 
ed by the favor of Divine Providence ; so recently deliver- 
ed out of Egyptian bondage, with signs and wonders so 
extraordinary, and guided into the occupancy of the fair 



276 



Thanksgiving. 



land which for so long a time had been promised 
to them and their fathers, should so soon, if at all, re- 
lapse into lawlessness, irreligion, and heathenism. We 
should have supposed that, with such memories as those 
which characterized their national history, and these 
so fresh and recent, they would have been sure to 
adhere to all those political and religious laws which 
were their security and honor and blessing. With what 
nation had God dealt as with them ? Yet twenty years 
only had passed since the death of Joshua — the leader 
of the nation, the viceroy of God, who had been a personal 
witness of all the marvels which had signalized their his- 
tory from the date of the exodus ; scarcely a decade of 
years had been finished since the last of those venerable 
men had died, who had participated in the scenes of the 
wilderness, and the occupation of the national domain ; 
when the whole people, as if smitten with frenzy, cast 
away their eminent prerogatives, secured to them at such 
a cost, and, like swine trampling on priceless pearls, 
abandoned themselves to anarchy and idolatry. Then 
occurred those scenes of rapine, violence, carnage, and 
barbaric cruelty, terminating in most fierce and bloody 
wars between tribes once linked in firmest concord, which 
cannot now be read without a blush for human shame 
and sighs for human folly. 

The method, as it would seem from this episode of 
history, as well as from the whole drama of history itself, 
by which the Almighty educates nations for a high civili- 
zation, is to allow them to experiment for themselves, 
according to their own ways and devices. There is a 
shorter, easier, and more economical method, within the 



Liberty and Law. 



reach of all, if they would but adopt it ; even to regard 
the requirements of God with implicit faith and obedi- 
ence. But when men will bolt out of the right way, and 
will do that which is right in their own eyes, though it be 
antagonistic to the will of the Supreme, there is but one 
way, even that they should make trial of their evil 
courses, and be made to feel, in their own experience, how 
evil they are, and how tremendous the consequences of 
every infraction of the Divine code. Such was the result 
of this portion of Hebrew history. It was well, both for 
themselves and for the world, that a nation, bent on the 
experiment, should make one trial of what it was to be 
without any lawful magistracy. It was not necessary that 
the experiment should be repeated. The lesson was 
burnt deep and ineffaceable into the national convictions. 
Sensualism, brutality, internecine wars, barbaric invasions, 
so far prevailed, that at length necessity, the instinct of 
self-preservation, suggested various remedies. Persons 
remarkable, at first, for physical strength and courage, 
presented themselves as rallying-points for the assertion 
of right, the vindication of justice, and the protection of 
the innocent. Such were the "judges" of Israel — Oth- 
niel, Ehud, Deborah and Barak, Gideon, Jephthah, and 
Samson — rude compounds, as we should say, of the war- 
rior and the magistrate, yet the offspring of necessity, and 
the strong helpers of the people, out of the morass of 
anarchy, into somewhat of order and law, gradually shaped 
into permanent magistracy, and culminating at last in the 
splendor of the Hebrew monarchy. 

Why should not every man be allowed to do that which 
is right in his own eyes ? Why should not merew/7/ and 



278 



Thanksgiving. 



feeling be a sufficient authority for the actions of indi- 
viduals and communities ? All have an intuitive appre- 
hension that such a state of things cannot be allowed ; 
that it would be sure, if tried, to bring about a general 
wreck and ruin of the race. Yet all may not be able to 
give such an answer to this question as would satisfy one 
who forms his opinions and regulates his conduct on 
ethical and religious grounds. 

The question is invested with special importance, in 
our own times, and in our own land, because of the ten- 
dency here to deify the ideas of personal rights, personal 
freedom, and personal independence. Every thing in our 
institutions, in our literature, in our manners, has long 
tended to stimulate these ideas to the utmost. We have 
had any number of discussions and treatises designed to 
prove that individual opinion was the highest arbiter of 
truth and duty, and that every man's own intuition was 
the ultimate standard of what is right. The whole ten- 
dency of our national life and thought is to foster this 
spirit of personal liberty and independence. Nor are 
these qualities to be spoken of with disrespect. They 
are most essential elements in the grand compound of 
human civilization. Combined with certain other ele- 
ments of law and order, they form the veiy highest de- 
velopment of humanity. What are the other elements so 
essential ? What are the limitations which must be fixed 
to the exercise of personal freedom ? This is the very gist 
of the question. This is only proposing, in another form, 
our original problem : Why may not every man do that 
which is right in his own eyes ? 

Man is not an independent existence, but a part of a 



Liberty and Law. 



living organism, which we call society, by which he is 
connected with other individuals in indissoluble relations. 
This is a necessary condition of things, dependent not on 
our choice, but without our choice, on the will of the All- 
Wise. We hear much of the social compact — an expres- 
sion used by those who have reasoned concerning the 
origin and laws of human society and civil polity ; and 
since we must have terms to represent ideas, there is no 
objection to this phrase, if we use it with a discreet per- 
ception of its import. The point to be guarded in the 
use of the word compact, or any of its equivalents, in the 
definition of society, is this : organized society is not the 
voluntary concourse of individuals, but a providential ne- 
cessity into which we are born, without our knowledge or 
consent. It is not of his own will that every child enters 
the world subject to an authority higher than his own. 
He is introduced, at his birth, into a social state which 
necessitates his subordination to a preexisting order, in 
the shape of parental government. In like manner, with- 
out his consent at all, he is born into the civil polity, a 
condition of things which depends, not on the voluntary 
associating of men, but on absolute necessities imposed 
by the Being who has given us an existence. Without 
this beneficent organization, which we call society, the 
human race could not exist at all ; certainly it could not 
exist with any possibility of civilization and culture and 
development and progress and happiness. The State 
represents the great ideas of order, security, right, justice, 
and humanity, as the necessary condition of all morality. 
There must be order as the basis of all right relations ; 
and order consists in obedience to positive laws, as a 



28o 



Thanksgiving. 



necessary condition, ordained by the Almighty. It is in 
this sense, that the Bible defines the powers that be — that 
is, civil government — as ordained of God ; asserting that 
resistance to this (without just cause) is resistance to God 
himself. In asserting this, the inspired Word does not 
represent that government is a cast-iron, immovable, un- 
changeable power, to exist in all ages and all countries, 
in one and the same form. It has itself applied spiritual 
and reformatory power which tends to make governments 
better, more just, and more humane. It instructs those 
who govern, that they too are under divine obligations to 
act without wrong, or cruelty, or oppression ; and the 
great problem of society, through solemn centuries, has 
been so to adjust these two forces, the freedom of the 
individual and the order of society, as to secure the 
greatest amount of all that is right, and just, and peace- 
ful, and happy. In the progress of events, it has some- 
times happened that the one force or the other has been 
in excess ; that there has been an uprising and out- 
bursting of popular liberty, which has overturned super- 
incumbent authority, creating, for a season, confusion, 
disorder, and revolutionary violence, till government 
could readjust itself on a better and wiser basis ; while, 
on the other hand, the Ruling Power has often asserted 
itself with such vigor and severity as to bear down all 
personal liberty, forbidding all motion, or peeping, or 
protesting, till stimulus, hope, and life, have died out of 
the individual man. 

Amidst all these alternations there has been an actual 
progress through these compound forces of freedom and 
order. The pendulum has swung to and fro, and the 



Liberty and Law. 



281 



index- finger on the clock of time has been moving on 
and round. It has been our boast — or, if the word sug- 
gests too readily the national fault of self-complacency — 
it has been our sober belief, that, as the result of all pre- 
ceding experiments, and the general improvement of the 
race, under the auspices of education and religion, in our 
own land, at length, there had been attained a form of 
government which secures, in happiest combination the 
world has ever seen, the largest amount of personal lib- 
erty, with the most reliable expression of order, protect- 
ing person and property. If either of these forces 
has been in danger of running to excess, it surely has 
not been severity on the part of the Ruling Power. 
The theory of our form of civil government is the right 
of free men to govern themselves, by laws which they 
have, from their own intelligent choice, themselves enact- 
ed and recognized. This peculiar form of social polity 
exists under what is called a constitution — a written con- 
stitution ; that is, a system of rules, and principles, and 
ordinances, by which the government shall be adminis- 
tered, and these adopted by the people themselves, and 
not a gift conferred by a monarch ; and, to guard against 
all sudden caprices, the whims and passions of an hour, 
these rules and ordinances are engrossed in an instru- 
ment, which prescribes the orderly method by which, at 
any time, the document itself may be altered and im- 
proved. 

The principle which underlies a government so con- 
stituted is, that the people themselves are so intelligent 
and virtuous that they can be trusted with the power of 
self-government. Whether this be true, in fact, of our 



282 



Thanksgiving. 



own population, is the very experiment which we are try- 
ing before the gaze of the world. The theory itself, 
whatever the issue of its first great trial, — what does it 
leave to be desired ? What could man ask more than 
this : the right to prescribe for himself the rules and ordi- 
nances by which government shall be administered, and 
the order of society shall be secured ? Could the imagi- 
nation of man go farther than this ? The Constitution of 
the British Realm is not a written instrument, in the 
hands of the people, to be read in schools ; it consists in 
an accumulation of historic precedents, of established 
usages, recognized as fundamental law ; but not written 
at all. For what has France been struggling through all 
her dynasties and revolutions, but that there should be 
granted to her some octroyee through imperial favor, which 
would secure to her citizens more of personal right and 
freedom? What more would Italy desire, sighing for 
unity, than the permission to govern herself according to 
a written constitution ? I will not speak of Spain and 
Austria, where the genius of order has reigned so long 
and so tyrannically, that individual freedom and courage 
are almost smothered out ; but how would Hungary and 
Poland, in which the seed-thoughts of our Protestant 
faith have been planted so deep, prolific already in noble 
purposes and struggles, how would they clap their hands 
for joy, if, at last, they could only attain their long-lost, 
long-sought right, of prescribing and administering their 
own constituted government ? 

This privilege, enjoyed by us, is no sudden attain- 
ment, but the fruitage of a long, slow, deep-rooted growth. 
It is the issue of historic causes. It has been purchased 



Liberty and Law. 283 

at a great price. We who enjoy it might think that it had 
always been in existence the same as now. In fact, it is 
of recent origin. At what a cost of time, and heroism, 
and martyrdom, and suffering, and blood, has it passed 
into our hands. Consider what has already been accom- 
plished under its auspices. It has secured all which is 
implied in order, with the least possible restraint consist- 
ent therewith, on the freedom of the individual. It has 
wronged no man. It has oppressed no man. It has 
never brought one man to the scaffold or the prison un- 
justly. It has secured to a vast population all their 
rights. Through this large domain any man — nay, any 
woman — could travel, unmolested, without espionage, 
without passports, and without a suspicion of harm. All 
forms of lawful business were protected, and a vast nation 
had started forth in a career of unprecedented prosperity, 
with no kind of restraint save what they had imposed on 
themselves for their own peace and comfort, as if to show 
to the world, at last, what a people could be and do, un- 
der the auspices of freedom, industry, education, and 
religion. Surely, if ever there was a people under every 
conceivable obligation to love their country, to obey 
its laws, to be loyal to its constitution, it is the people of 
these United States. If the Word of God, fresh from 
its inspired origin, abounds with commands to " honor 
the king," to " obey magistrates," to revere authority, to 
pray for all who represent the ruling power, when that 
ruling power existed in the shape of heathen emperors, 
irresponsible and despotic, what emphasis belongs to the 
same precepts in this stage of society, when government, 
constituted by the people themselves, represents the 



284 



Thanksgiving. 



heaven-born law of order, with the very minimum of 
restraint upon personal liberty? 

Our question is answered ; not on grounds of mere 
policy and expediency, but by the eternal laws of Provi- 
dence, and the principles of revealed religion. To do 
that which is right in our own eyes, without regard to 
lawful order, is to strike ruthlessly at the vitals of society, 
and demolish the necessary safeguards of all human in- 
terests and possessions. 

That there is a right reserved to nations to change 
and revolutionize civil government, we concede. But 
that right, like every other, must be justified by morality. 
It exists only when government has been perverted from 
its proper ends, to such a degree that redress can be ob- 
tained in no other way. It is when the wrongs perpetrated 
by government are mortal and incurable ; so that the 
very principle of order which the State represents, the 
very ideas of justice and right and humanity and happiness 
which are symbolized by the Ruling Power, demand a 
change to be made, even at the expense of a temporary 
inconvenience, peril, and suffering ; a parenthetical evil for 
the sake of an ulterior good ; amputation and cautery for 
the sake of the life. Till such a case is presented, every 
act of resistance to civil government is denounced as im- 
moral and unchristian. 

What is the cause assigned for this revolutionary 
movement ? Was it incurable through constitutional 
processes ? Was it of such a grievous nature that there 
was no remedy to be hoped for through the ballot-box, 
legislature, and the judiciary ? Was it of such a deep- 
seated and malignant character that it became necessary, 



Liberty and Law. 285 



for the sake of the common good, to incur all the risks 
and expenditures, perils, sufferings, and woes of Revolu- 
tion and War, that it might be extirpated ? 

As these questions have been asked, so must they be 
answered before all the civilization of the world. Con- 
temporary nations await the plea, and posterity will pro- 
nounce its judgment. Manifestoes, declarations setting 
forth the reasons for the act, have already been issued by 
some who have taken part in it. Others have contented 
themselves with falling back upon certain alleged rights, 
without assigning any reason at all, failing to plead at the 
bar of public judgment. That these reasons are inade- 
quate, and some of them contradictory ; that, compared 
with the issues involved, all of them are frivolous, will, I 
think, be conceded by all who pronounce a calm and 
dispassionate verdict, and who have little heart to deal in 
mere invective and denunciation. To say the least, such 
an attempt to overthrow the government of the country 
was gratuitous ; altogether unnecessary, in view of any 
real or imaginary wrong ; and if gratuitous and unneces- 
sary, how criminal and wicked.* 

The question forced upon an incredulous and reluctant 
country, was nothing but the existence of its own nation- 

* The best testimony on this subject, because removed from the 
possibility of prejudice or misjudgment, has been presented in two 
addresses, on two occasions, by the same person, the Vice-President 
of the Southern Confederacy. In the first, delivered in the State of 
Georgia, when discussing before his fellow- citizens the right and ex- 
pediency of secession, he denounced the act as unnecessary, and 
ruinous ; declaring the whole project to be the scheme of ambitious 
and disappointed politicians. The second, delivered more recently, 



286 



Thanksgiving. 



ality. That there had been a highly exasperated feeling, 
which was to be deplored, was true. But if this was to 
be allowed as adequate cause for disruption, why might 
not some other excitement and displeasure in some other 
direction prompt other States to fly off at a tangent and 
array themselves as foreign and hostile bodies ? The 
difficulty lies in this — that we are to be forced. to recognize 
a right of voluntary withdrawal ; which implied of necessity 
national suicide. If one part could withdraw, why not 
another ? Nay, facts already show that the question was 
not to be confined to States, but that one portion of a 
State could claim a right to separate from the rest. If 
States from States, why not counties from States, and 
towns and cities from counties, and individuals from towns 
— tell us where this process of dissolution and disintegra- 
tion shall end ? It has no end short of the destruction 
of the whole social system — the dissolving away into 
chaos of that constituted order, which is the definition 
and purpose of the State, leaving the dismembered parts 
to a condition of anarchy ; every man doing that which 

after he had himself been swept into the vortex of which he had 
warned others so earnestly before, in which he has given us an elabo- 
rate declaration of reasons, aiming even at a philosophical analysis 
and defence of the new Republic, asserting that slavery, as a normal 
condition, was its corner-stone ; that this indeed was contrary to the 
opinions of Washington and the fathers of the country, and that it 
had been reserved for this day to discover this truth, as the basis, 
religious and philosophical, of a new social organization. And here 
he rests his plea. It is not strange that when this address was re- 
published in the city of Paris, by an American citizen, it was pro- 
nounced by the Press a forgery, not to be credited till authenticated 
by the affidavit of a French consul ! 



Liberty and Law. 



is right in his own eyes. The curtailing of our national 
domain is not the question ; the circumscribing of our 
vast domains is not the issue — that might humiliate, 
but it could be borne ; the life of our nationality might 
still be intact. But the tremendous question is — and we 
cannot evade it — how the right of voluntary separation, at 
mere will, upon mere feeling, can be conceded to the 
several parts, larger and smaller, without consenting to a 
principle which would be sure to recur again in other 
issues, and at some other caprice, till the whole civil 
polity, the entire social fabric, had crumbled to pieces. 
The question on trial, therefore, is the very existence of 
lawful government, — and that government, the very one 
which has made us the envy of so large a part of the 
world — self-government, under the auspices of liberty and 
virtue. 

This is the issue which is now joined. It is not a 
warfare of one section against another. It is not a war- 
fare against slavery, however, directly or indirectly, that 
may be involved in it. We hold ourselves still bound by 
constitutional obligations on this as on all other subjects. 
It is not a warfare for political ascendancy, for partisan 
preferences. It is not a warfare for territorial conquest, 
for the lust of subjugation. The very idea is as absurd 
as for the eye to attempt to conquer the ear, or the foot 
to subjugate the hand. It is simply, solely, honestly, for 
the defence of constitutional government, as the only 
breakwater against inevitable faction and feud ; the only 
surety for order and justice and humanity. It is for the 
maintenance of the common weal ; the health and vigor 
and life of the whole nationality. It is to uphold what 



288 Thanksgiving, 



we believe is of essential service and benefit to all alike. 
It is to decide whether we can abide in peace and unity, 
under lawful magistracy, or whether, at every gust of pas- 
sion, or every whim of feeling, we are to be dismembered 
into contemptible factions, and dissolve away into abso- 
lute lawlessness. Nothing is demanded of one member 
of the body Vvdiich is not demanded of all. Nothing is 
demanded of any, more humiliating or more unreasonable 
than subjection to those self-imposed laws which have 
conferred on the whole country such boundless prosperity, 
and which have never inflicted a wrong on any. 

This is, as I believe, the one issue, in view of which 
we are now making history for ourselves and the world. 
We must meet it in the spirit nurtured by our religion. 
We must meet it with the temper of men who have been 
taught in the school of Christ, to bear all personal affronts 
with meekness — smitten on the one cheek, to turn the 
other also ; but who, when great interests are at stake for 
posterity and for the race, are inspired by an unselfish 
and manly energy, counselled by our religious faith, to 
withstand in the evil day, and, having done all, to stand. 
War is, indeed, a tremendous necessity. Gladly would we 
have cut off our right hands, and plucked out our right 
eyes, if we could have spared our native land the direful 
visitation. Since these events have come upon us, since 
we are not spared the trials which we had fondly believed 
belonged only to the past and the remote, let us seek to 
extract the lessons which will secure for us a better and 
wiser prosperity. There has been a too general laxity of 
habit in regard to law. As a people, we have erred before 
God in this respect. It has not been in one latitude alone 



Liberty and Law. 



289 



that men have trifled with legal authority, and evinced a 
disposition to spurn control. That Liberty which we have 
almost defied, has been conceived, with a flushed cheek, 
and loose ungirded dress, conferring license on her wor- 
shippers to do as they willed. The Liberty which we 
honor, is a reverend form, the first-born of Virtue, wedded 
to order, girded with truth, with a chaste smile, and a 
strong right arm. If it must be that our faith in the 
capacity of self-government, under the auspices of the 
Christian religion, is to be tried by fire, then let it be 
tried, but not consumed. Sir Archibald Alison has pro- 
nounced the American Constitution a failure, and recom- 
mends a national Church and a national monarchy as the 
remedy. History does not roll backward after this man- 
ner, but onward always, purifying itself as it flows, by the 
effervescence of contrary qualities. Our faith does not 
lead us to abandon our nationality as a failure ; it only 
instructs us, if it need be by fire, then, so as by fire, to 
purify its properties, and amend its defects. Grateful for 
the memories of the past, with no bend of shame in our 
coat-armorial, hopeful for the future, with an ever-increas- 
ing trust in Divine Providence as our distinctive quality, 
we look forward and upward, above and beyond the dun 
smoke of the battle-cloud, to a more serene and tranquil 
sky, which sooner or later is sure to come. We will pray 
and hope and look for nothing worse than this — that the 
whole population of these United States may gladly sub- 
jugate themselves to constituted law ; that nothing may 
be defeated but that which imperils the good of all ; that 
nothing may rise to the ascendancy but that which is 
right and just and humane ; that all causes, come whence 
13 



290 



Thanksgiving, 



they may, which tend to exasperate and irritate and vex, 
may be removed, and that the people in every portion of 
the continent, identified in history, in interest, and in 
hope, may study the things whereby they may edify one 
another ; that peace, on such a basis, and with such pur- 
poses, may speedily return, so that, as the tender grass 
springeth up after the rain, all that blesses, and beautifies 
life may reappear with a fresher and surer growth ; that 
confidence and credit, scared away by the noise of arms, 
may return ; that suspicion and fear may fly away for- 
ever ; that commerce and all the arts of peaceful life may 
resume their wonted channels ; that education and reli- 
gion may bestow on all their divine blessings and strength ; 
that liberty may grant and secure the privilege to do all 
that is right and good, and that only ; so that the sun 
may reappear holding its steady sway along the western 
sky, neither going backwards, nor hiding itself in clouds : 
but as the vapors which strive in vain to conceal the 
heavenly luminary along its daily path, become after- 
wards the instrument of reflecting its light, in most glo- 
rious effulgence, so will we hope, believe, and pray, that 
all the trials through which w r e are now passing, or are 
destined yet to pass, will only contribute to enhance the 
glory, which, according to the word of the Almighty, is 
sure to come in the Latter Day. 



INDEPENDENCE NOT SECESSION. 



In righteousness doth he judge and make war. 

Rev. 19 mi. 

Manus hsec inimica tyrannis 
Ense petit placidam sub libertate quietam. 

Algernon Sydney. 



XIV. 



INDEPENDENCE NOT SECESSION. 

It is common to celebrate the birth of our national 
independence with every demonstration of popular joy. 
So it was predicted by one of the authors of the im- 
mortal Declaration — it would always be celebrated with 
bonfires, and illuminations, ringing of bells, and salvos 
of artillery. 

Special reasons gave to this anniversary, the present 
year,* an extraordinary zest and importance. We have 
reached a new epoch in our national existence. We 
have passed through a second birth. Delivered from 
great perils and pains, we are just entering a new period 
of our history. Not less important is the termination of 
our great civil war, than was the beginning of our inde- 
pendent nationality. Separated by an interval Of nearly 
a century, the two events are immediately related. They 
have their resemblances and their contrasts. Both are 
part of one great historic development. " Deep answers 
unto deep at the noise of God's water-spouts." Our na- 
tion's birth and our nation's vindication are connected 

* 1865. 



Thanksgiving. 



directly with human rights, liberty, and welfare ; and are 
important acts in the progress of the kingdom of our 
Lord on the earth. 

As such, they deserve to be celebrated, most devout- 
ly, by an intelligent and religious people. They demand 
something more of us than holiday amusements, and 
noise, and pageantry, and exuberance of animal spirits. 
There should be a thoughtful consideration of causes, 
and principles, and divine laws. There should be a 
wise looking at the past and the future. Above all, 
there should be a most devout study of divine providence 
— its unfoldings and intentions in connection with our 
history. We cannot adjust ourselves wisely and vigor- 
ously to our duties as citizens in this Christian Republic, 
if we are not well informed as to the principles of divine 
jurisprudence which are to be acknowledged in our pecu- 
liar nationality. 

While Washington commanded that the manifesto of 
national independence should be read at the head of 
every division of the army, the clergy, of their own im- 
pulse, performed the same office, with a very general 
unanimity, from their pulpits. 

Those who aided and abetted the recent rebellion, at 
home and abroad, claimed that it had, for its origin and 
defence, the same rights and principles as those which 
were involved in that Revolution which secured to us 
independence from the Old World, and which is now uni- 
versally celebrated as an act of wisdom, and righteous- 
ness, and honor. Was the one event right because it 
was successful? Is the other to be branded as crime*' 
merely because it was defeated ? Or, did the one sue- 



Independence not Secession. 



ceed because it was right, and did the other fail be- 
cause it was wrong? What are the laws of right and 
wrong as applicable to such subjects ? What are the 
principles, in the code of Christian ethics, which make 
one revolution rightful and obligatory, and another 
criminal and unjustifiable ? Surely, we are in a most for- 
lorn condition if we are not able to render a good and 
sufficient answer to questions like these. Such matters 
should not be left to caprice, to prejudice, to passion. 
They come within the range of divine laws. These laws 
are capable of exact statement. We cheerfully undertake 
to define them. We hold that what is generally known 
in history as the American Revolution — the act of separa- 
tion from the British Government — was right, not because 
it succeeded, but that it succeeded because it was right 
— right in itself, right in accordance with divine laws ; 
and therefore it deserves to be commemorated with 
gratitude, and all who accomplished it with immortal 
honor. We hold that the recent attempt to revolutionize 
the government of this country was wrong, criminal, un- 
justifiable, notwithstanding the numbers even of good 
men who were involved in it ; that in its inception, and 
in its progress, it was at variance with the revealed law 
of God ; and that it has been overtaken by defeat, and 
will be remembered as an offence, because it was gratui- 
tous, and against the statutes of the Almighty. Such lan- 
guage might pass for mere breath, if unsupported by 
proof. Proof we propose to furnish. It will be my ob- 
ject, in this chapter, to verify the statements now made ; 
presenting, in form, the contrasts between the two great- 
events in our history — the first and the latest — with the 



296 



Thanksgiving. 



reasons which crowned the one with success and glory, 
and doomed the other to defeat and ignominy. Sad for 
us and for the world will it be, if we do not rightly in- 
terpret the lesson which has been uttered in the terrific 
voices of war, and written, large and distinct, in human 
blood. 

We begin what we have to propose on this subject 
with the inspired affirmation that government is a divine 
ordinance. "The powers that be are ordained of God." 
We are all aware of the manner in which this doctrine of 
revelation has been perverted and abused. Despots have 
cited it as the basis of their authority. Nothing is here 
said or implied as to the form of government. The ex- 
pression is very general. The reference is simply to 
government. Civil government is a power for human 
protection. The authority for such a power proceeds 
from the Almighty, who has ordained that society could 
not exist without it. It does not spring, therefore, in an 
ultimate sense, from the consent of the governed. Surely, 
the right of parental government does not proceed from 
the consent of the child, who is born under domestic 
authority. It results from the will and ordinance of God. 
The object of government is, not the aggrandizement of 
those who administer it, but the welfare of those over 
whom it is extended. It is an agent for human protec- 
tion, security, and well-being. Divine benevolence being 
its authorship, human happiness is its object and end. 

From these premises we infer, first, the duty of obey- 
ing and conserving and honoring civil government, so 
long as it is administered with reference to its prescribed 
object ; and, secondly, the right and the duty of modifying 



Independence not Secession. 297 

and changing government when it is perverted from its 
ordained uses into an instrument of wrong and oppres- 
sion, and organizing a new and better form of adminis- 
tration which will conform to the legitimate intentions 
of civil government. These premises and inferences 
cover the whole ground pertaining to our subject. They 
prove the right of revolution in certain circumstances. 
They define the circumstances in which alone revolution 
is right. They inform us when attempts at revolution 
are wrong, a crime against society and against God. 

The right to revolutionize government inheres in the 
very purpose of government. Mark the word : to revo- 
lutionize government, not to abolish government, not to 
destroy all government, since the necessity of some gov- 
ernment is a divine ordinance for human welfare ; but 
to change its form, its method of jurisdiction — removing 
one and substituting in its place another which is better. 

When is it right to revolutionize government ? We 
answer : when the existing governmeitt has so far failed of 
its legitimate object as to be an instrument of wrong, un- 
righteousness, and suffering. Then, and then only, is it 
right and proper, in accordance with the divine law of 
benevolence, that it should be altered and set aside, and 
another form of government organized, which will the 
better promote the protection, safety, and happiness of 
the people. The process of change may require suffer- 
ing. It may involve an appeal to arms, and the shedding 
of blood j but the result contemplated, — redress of wrong, 
the removal of evils, the increase of happiness, the greater 
good of the whole, — justifies the stern and violent pro- 
ceeding. Christian Benevolence smiles on an act which, 
13* 



298 



Thanksgiving. 



proceeding from such a motive, tends to such an issue, 
and honors it with her blessing and sanction. 

Such, we hold, were the circumstances which justified 
the American Revolution, and shed immortal renown 
upon those who conducted and accomplished it. It did 
not spring from mere passion. It had a better basis than 
a simple preference. Our fathers did not rebel against 
the mother-country because they did not like a monarchy, 
and because they thought they should like another form 
of government. Many of them were strongly attached to 
the ancient traditions of the ancestral land. They had 
no desire to inaugurate a new and independent govern- 
ment, provided the evils from which they suffered could 
be redressed. They began with protesting against those 
evils. They desired that they should be. reformed and 
abolished. They remonstrated against abuses. They 
expostulated with the British Parliament and King. They 
were not wild and malignant insurgents. They were 
reformers, in the best sense. They knew not when they 
began how far their protestations would lead. They pe- 
titioned, they entreated. They sought for relief. They 
were subject to wrongs which amounted to oppression. 
There were those in the British Parliament who them- 
selves protested against the wrongs inflicted upon the 
American Colonies. The eloquence with which Chatham 
plead the cause of our fathers, insisting on their rights, 
still echoes in the annals of the British Senate. But all 
these remonstrances and expostulations were in vain. 
Redress was denied. At length, the evils complained of 
reached such an enormity, that the duty and wisdom of 
resistance were revolved by our fathers. They did not 



Independence not Secession. 



precipitate revolution. They weighed well the cost. In 
their immortal manifesto they acknowledged that " exist- 
ing governments should not be changed for light and 
transient causes." They regarded it as better to suffer 
wrong, while the wrong was tolerable, than to expose the 
country to all the sufferings and woes of revolution. But 
when abuses and usurpations were so multiplied as to 
prove that the government which originated them was 
perverted into an instrument of oppression, they could 
not evade the conviction, that it was their duty to set it 
aside, and provide other methods and agencies for their 
security. Then was it that they made their appeal to 
God, and to the "judgment of mankind." They made 
an expression of the reasons which justified their re- 
sistance to the long-established government, and their 
purpose to provide another. This was the design of the 
Declaration of Independence — to assign the reasons 
which impelled them to make this painful and violent 
separation. Those reasons, as they are recorded in the 
immortal document, are twenty-seven in number. We 
hold that they are good and sufficient. They are of 
such a character as indicate a radical perversion of civil 
government. They prove that the government by which 
those wrongs were perpetrated, instead of being an 
agency to protect and to bless, was itself an instrument 
of tremendous mischief. Its perversion was so complete 
and incurable, that nothing remained for good men and 
frue but to set it aside, and adopt what was better. 
Their action was prompted by no antipathy of races, by- 
no prejudice of classes, by no impulse of passion, by no 
ambition of power. It was a calm, intelligent, rational 



300 Thanksgiving, 

conviction on their part that the government under which 
they had lived had so far failed of the object for which 
government was instituted, that the common welfare, 
benevolence itself, demanded that a change should be 
made, by a revolution which might cost sacrifice, suffer- 
ing, and blood. We do not propose to repeat, compare, 
and weigh, the several reasons assigned by our fathers, 
for the assertion of their independence. They are all on 
record. The wrongs of which they complained were not 
superficial. They imply a total subversion of the divine 
ends of government. Instead of being an organized 
power to protect, to bless, it was an armed power to irri- 
tate, annoy, oppress, and curse. And for those radical 
mischiefs there was only one radical and efficient cure. 
The government itself must be thrown aside, and another, 
just and benignant, be organized in its stead. This was 
what our fathers undertook and accomplished in the 
American Revolution. Their acts stand approved by the 
divine law of love. It is justified by the legislation of 
Him who is the ordainer of governments for man's welfare. 
That which is the end and design of government was the 
warrant for the change of government. The men who 
inaugurated the Revolution were called by the parent 
government — rebels. We regard them as reformers, 
righteous and heroic ; and applaud their doing, not for 
its success, but for the great principles and laws of 
benevolence which prompted and conducted the achieve- 
ment in the interests of human rights and human happi-« 
ness. 

We pass now over an interval of fourscore years, to 
the recent attempt to revolutionize the government of 



Independence not Secession. 301 

this nation, from which we have so recently emerged. 
That the government founded by the people of this coun- 
try, nearly a century ago, was absolutely perfect, it would 
be false to affirm. That it was good, perhaps the best 
which in the circumstances could have been constructed ; 
that it was just, and liberal, and benignant ; that its aim 
was to promote the general welfare ; that it was, in fact, 
administered through a series of years, in the spirit with 
which it was organized ; that, through all changes of party 
and organs, it looked to the rights and security and good 
of the country, in the general tone of its action : these 
are facts which we affirm to be true, beyond all question 
or contradiction. These are the things which have made 
our government the theme of general panegyric. We 
will not now compare it with other governments. We will 
not expose ourselves to the imputation of lauding it with 
indiscriminate eulogy. It is enough that we take these 
facts for our premises : that the American Government 
was to be regarded as the divine ordinance for the good 
of the American people ; that it actually accomplished 
the end for which it was instituted ; and that, therefore, 
it was the religious duty of all to conserve and honor it, 
until it could be demonstrated that it was so perverted in 
spirit and acts, that the law of benevolence demanded 
that it should be revolutionized and overthrown. 

It is from these premises that we start in our religious 
reasoning. Was the American Government an instru- 
ment of wrong and oppression ? Did it fail of the object 
for which civil government is ordained of God ? Who 
ever pretended that it did ? Dissatisfaction has frequent- 
ly arisen in view of particular measures. Parties and 



302 



Thanksgiving. 



sections have been disaffected by the failure of favorite 
projects. When majorities rule, minorities will always 
grumble and complain. But who has ever alleged that 
the Federal Government of this great nation was an in- 
strument of mischief, of oppression, and of wrong ! To 
prove to the satisfaction of all that no such necessity 
existed, as did exist in that original Revolution we com- 
memorate, we confine ourselves to a few witnesses, whose 
testimony cannot be ascribed to prejudice. 

The first of these is Mr. Jefferson Davis, who, in the 
Senate of the United States, in the year 1860, used these 
words : " This is the best Government ever instituted by 
man, unexceptionally administered, and under which the 
people have been prosperous beyond comparison with 
any other people whose career has been recorded in 
history." 

The second is Mr. Alexander H. Stephens, of 
Georgia, who, in the year 1861, expressed himself, in the 
convention of his own State, as follows : " I must declare 
here, as I have often before, what has been repeated by 
the greatest and wisest of statesmen and patriots in this 
and other lands, that the American Government is the 
best and purest, the most equal in its rights, the most 
just in its decisions, the most lenient in its measures, and 
most aspiring in its principles to elevate the race of men, 
that the sun of heaven has ever shone upon. Now, for 
you to attempt to overthrow such a Government as this, 
under which we have lived for more than three quarters 
of a century, in which we have gained our wealth, our 
standing as a nation, our domestic safety while the ele- 
ments of peril are around us, with peace and tranquillity, 



Independence not- Secession. 



accompanied with unbounded prosperity and rights un- 
assailed, is the height of madness, folly, and wickedness." 

The third is Henry A. Wise, then Governor of Vir- 
ginia, who, in the year 1859, sending this sentiment to a 
public gathering in Richmond : " The Union and the 
Constitution of the United States as they are — the coun- 
try, the whole country " — descants, even to rhapsody, on 
the magnificence of the idea thus embodied, which made 
" him, an unit, the possessor of the whole Union with its 
pride, and its greatness, and its immortal annals," con- 
cluding with these words : " If any would not love such a 
country, let him have no country to love ; and if any 
would array this country's parts against each other in sec- 
tional division and strife, let them have no inheritance in 
the whole — the grand, great whole — but let them selfishly 
have a single small space for their safe keeping, a house 
made for treason, felony, or mania, a prison or a mad- 
house." 

This is testimony from the right quarter and of the 
right quality. It might be reinforced in the same line 
to any degree. But it would be superfluous. Whatever 
was the reason alleged for the recent attempt at revolu- 
tion, it was not this — that the American Government was 
so perverted from the proper use and end of government, 
that duty required that it should be changed and set 
aside. If this reason did not exist, then the endeavor 
at revolution, we will not say on political, but on Christian 
grounds, was unjustifiable and criminal. No one, to our 
knowledge, has pretended to prove that such a reason 
existed. There was any amount of exasperation because 
of other things ; recriminations based on other grounds 



304 Thanksgiving. 

were hurled to and fro through the air ; but who, in any 
part of this country, or of the world, ever undertook to 
show that the Government of the United States was so 
despotic, so wicked, so cruel, that a regard for the general 
welfare — which is another expression for benevolence — 
required that it should be overthrown ? We plant our- 
selves firmly on this ground. For the present, we hold 
in abeyance every other consideration. We confine our- 
selves strictly, for the moment, to this one. It is a ground 
on which all believers in the Bible, and all sincere friends 
of order, of law, of good government, and w T ell-regulated 
liberty throughout the world, should stand together. It 
is the ground on which we justify, on our part, the war 
in which we have been engaged, in defence of the na- 
tional life. Just now, we hold ourselves to this single 
issue. We endeavored to preserve that government 
which we knew deserved to be upheld, both for ourselves 
and for all mankind, against the assaults of men who 
sought to destroy it. Reasonably did we anticipate the 
sympathy and support of all friends of good government 
throughout the world in this righteous struggle. W T e did 
not expect the sympathy, either of despots or anarchists. 
It would not have disappointed us if the Emperor of the 
French had withheld his sympathy from our purpose to 
maintain, at any cost, our constitutional government. 
The world at large may have forgotten, in the brilliant 
success of the man, his art, his policy, the tremendous 
crimes by which he vaulted to his present position at the 
head of the Empire. But there are those, on both sides 
of the sea, who will never forget the scenes which occurred 
in Paris between the 2d and the 4th days of December, 



Independence not Secession. 



185 1, when he who was the President of the Republic, 
by a deliberate plot, called a coup d'etat, drenched the 
Boulevards with innocent blood, and stained his own 
name with the infamy of perjury, that he might wear, for 
a season, the title of Emperor. No reason was there, 
why we should have expected the sympathy of such a 
man, who had revolutionized the government of his own 
country with criminal ambition to exalt himself, in our 
upright purpose to maintain our own good and lawful 
government ; but reason enough there was why we should 
expect no qualified sympathy from our ancestral land, 
whose traditions and history are so intimately related to 
good government, to true liberty and pure religion. Re- 
ligious assemblies and Parliamentary debates have as- 
signed as a reason why England stood aloof from our 
defensive struggle, that it was not designed nor prosecuted 
on our part with the intention of overthrowing slavery. 
That is true. This war, so far as the loyal States are 
concerned, was not begun nor prosecuted with that mo- 
tive ; however true it was, that slavery ere long became 
involved in the sweep of the whirlwind. It is true that 
the inhabitants of the Northern States did not rush to 
arms for the purpose of destroying slavery. They could 
not have been united on that issue. They were united 
in the solemn purpose to defend and perpetuate the Na- 
tional Government. On that issue, they had a right to 
expect the good wishes and the blessing of all right-mind- 
ed men throughout the world. For the moment, we keep 
to this issue and no other. What would the friends of 
human society, the friends of good government — men 
who believe neither in anarchy nor despotism — friends 



306 



Thanksgiving, 



of order, of law, of liberty, of religion — what would they 
have had us to do, in the interest of the human race, but 
resolutely to resist all attempts to overthrow a govern- 
ment so good and genial as our own ? The end has not 
come as yet to this great strife, so far as its issues are sure 
to affect and involve the future of other nations ; but 
woeful would it have been for all the prospects of the 
world, had this gratuitous and unjustifiable attempt at rev- 
olution been successful. We had reason to expect that 
all candid minds — freed from jealousy and from fear — 
purified from the sympathy with the two extremes of 
tyranny and agrarianism — would have cheered, with one 
voice of approval and of prayer, this noble intent to up- 
hold, at any expense of treasure and blood, this great 
ordinance of God for human welfare — a government 
which, by universal consent, was true to its benevolent in- 
tent Where was the spirit of Hampden and Russel and 
Milton at that critical hour ? Why was it not given out 
as in the sound of many waters in aid of a cause which, 
sure as any truth, involves the welfare of the world ? By 
what spell was it that in public life, even in that Britain 
whose history and literature are so affluent in apostrophes 
to constitutional law, those who advocated our cause with 
full-voiced sympathy were so few, and those who looked 
at it askant, with suspicion, with ill-concealed disappro- 
bation, were so many and so strong ? These are questions 
which one day will demand an answer. We intend to 
have it known that we are true to our ancestral traditions ; 
that we have not forgotten the lessons of British history ; 
that we have not parted with all faith in the teachings of 
Providence and Revelation ; that we threw off one gov- 



Independence not Secession. , 307 

eminent and undertook one revolution because that gov- 
ernment was perverted into an instrument of wrong and 
oppression ; and that we have defended another govern- 
ment and defeated another revolution because the gov- 
ernment was just and good and lenient, and that revolu- 
tion aimed to destroy what God has ordained that we 
should honor and conserve. 

No one familiar with the history of this country can 
question that, in one way or another, slavery was the 
cause of this recent commotion. To write out this his- 
tory ; to define the position assumed by extreme men on 
either side ; to describe the measures and acts by which 
feeling became exasperated and inflamed, would be super- 
fluous. We content ourselves with repeating the remark, 
that the destruction of slavery was not the motive which 
united the loyal States of the country to commence and 
prosecute the expensive war which God has crowned 
with success ; but, inasmuch as they who inaugurated 
armed rebellion against the National Government risked 
this institution of slavery on the issue of the war, by a 
series of events which were foreseen by none at the be- 
ginning, but which now appear to all as the special inter- 
position of Providence, that system which was the root 
of all our public calamities, has been, by universal belief 
and consent, utterly abolished, and the whole land — North, 
South, East, West — admitting it now, will rejoice in it with 
universal gladness. God has wrought more than man 
had devised. 

The completeness, the thoroughness of this victory in 
behalf of good government, is amazing. Nothing like it 
is to be found in history, when we consider the extent 



Thanksgiving. 



of our territory and the numbers arrayed on either side. 
Of one thing now, we are assured — the respect, the honor, 
the gratitude of all liberal minds, and all friends of free 
government throughout the world. Our cause is their 
cause. None have occasion to regret the issue of this 
war, but those who were apprehensive of the growth of 
liberal ideas and just principles in reference to civil gov- 
ernment. The common people throughout the whole of 
the Eastern hemisphere, earnest for governments which 
will protect and bless them, heard of it gladly. The 
great leaders of religious and civil liberty throughout the 
world have made it the occasion of eulogy and of thanks. 
None are more certain to rejoice in it, as a measure look- 
ing to the permanent peace and prosperity of the coun- 
try, after the exasperations of the hour have passed away, 
than those who were deluded into the vain attempt to 
revolutionize the government and destroy our nationality 
in the interest of human slavery. 

The result we have reached has been at a vast ex- 
pense. We cannot say, even when we compute the 
number of graves or the hosts of crippled and mutilated 
men who demand our respect and honor in the streets, 
that the price has been too great. All great achieve- 
ments in the interest of the human race are accomplished 
through suffering. Our fathers suffered, but not in vain. 
We have suffered, but not in vain. 

The sentiments appropriate to the times are not pride, 
insolence, and ambition, but gratitude, faith in God, faith 
in our institutions, and a resolute purpose to keep that 
faith with ourselves, and with the world, in the interest 
oflaw, liberty, and all goodness. We are entering upon 



Independence not Secession. 



a new historic epoch. It is with us as with the world 
emerging from the flood. That flood had enriched the 
earth with its vast deposits — to be improved by a better 
culture. We are not the same nation, in many respects, 
now that we have come out of this war, as when we went 
into it. We have no fear that such a war will ever be 
repeated, so long as the sun and moon endure. We re- 
joice that this has been decided in our own day. We 
have proved and settled it that liberty does not mean the 
absence of law ; that the best and largest freedom does 
not imply the destruction of government. If we have 
had great deliverances, we must now meet great respon- 
sibilities. With victories in the field there must be the 
greater and sublimer victories of peace. We must con- 
quer the resentments of the defeated, by conquering our 
own. We must be careful that constitutional law is not 
weakened nor dishonored by the hands of those who 
have achieved its vindication. Grave questions are on 
our hands, demanding wisdom, humanity, moderation, 
religious patriotism. If many of us are prone to think 
that mistakes have been made in our country, by the 
allowance of universal suffrage, the most they can be 
expected to concede is, that its exercise should henceforth 
be impartial. We like the expression impartial suffrage 
better than universal suffrage. Whatever qualifications 
may be thought proper for the high and solemn duties of 
a voter, let those qualifications be allowed to work im- 
partially, without regard to color. Those qualifications 
existing, let none be denied the right of voting, because 
of the complexion of the skin ; and, on the other hand, 
we may well hesitate to confer that right on any, because 



3 1 o Thanksgiving. 



they are black, when wanting the qualifications which are 
expected of others. 

Some questions which are destined to convulse the 
nations of Europe we have already settled. The time is 
certain to come when our sympathies will be looked for 
and valued. They will never be withheld from what is 
good through any spirit of retaliation. The sympathies 
of the American people will always be with free institu- 
tions, with liberal governments, with the rights of the 
people in Church and State ; and never will they be given 
to any class of men, who, under whatever name, agree in 
thinking that the many are to be held subservient to the 
few, and that the object of government is to aggrandize 
the oligarchy by whom it is administered. Government 
is for the good of all the people ; and a religious people 
will always conserve it as God's ordinance for the happi- 
ness, and not the harm, of society. Thoroughly imbued 
with this conviction, mindful of our history, knowing well 
the sublime events out of which it sprung, and those yet 
sublimer events which it foreshadows ; grateful to the 
Almighty for our earlier and our latter deliverances, we 
pledge ourselves to the great work of educating and 
Christianizing this ever-increasing population ; before 
the world we pledge our sympathy and aid to the great 
cause of liberty, of good laws, of humanity, of good 
morals, of true religion, of universal brotherhood and 
peace. 



AMERICAN NATIONALITY. 



He maketh wars to cease. Be still, and know that I am God. 
The Lord of Hosts is with us : the God of Jacob is our refuge. 

Ps. 46. 



XV. 



AMERICAN NATIONALITY. 

( 

Many instances of national thanksgivings are record- 
ed in history. There is that most memorable deliverance 
of Israel from the bondage in Egypt, the miraculous 
passage of the Red Sea, upon whose shores the tribes, 
with Moses and Aaron and Miriam for leaders, with 
timbrels and dances, joined in a song of gladness and 
triumph, which elsewhere in Scripture is associated with 
that chorus which will be shouted at the last, by all 
the followers of the Lamb on the sea of glass. Our 
ancestral history is marked at every stage by these occa- 
sions of thanksgiving by a whole people. Edward the 
Third, the night after the famous battle of Cressy, issued 
orders, not only for abstaining from all insulting of the 
conquered and all boasting of their own valor, but for 
returning thanks to the Divine Giver of the victory. 
After the decisive battle of Poictiers, and the victory of 
the Black Prince, eight days successively were appointed 
by his father to be observed throughout England, for 
solemn and public thanksgiving. Few scenes in history- 
are to be compared with that after the battle at Agincourt, 
where the gallant Henry the Fifth, with a small army, 
14 



Thanksgiving. 



routed the immense forces of France, when the king order 
ed the 115th Psalm to be repeated in the midst of his 
victorious army, and at the words " not unto us, not unto 
us, but unto thy name, be the praise," he himself, his 
dismounted cavalry, his entire army, with all its chivalry, 
fell to the earth upon their faces, ascribing to the Almighty 
all the glory of their victory. 

When the Spanish Armada, bearing such menaces 
against Protestantism and liberty, was so terribly destroy- 
ed by a tempest upon the sea, not only was there a season 
of national thanksgiving throughout England, but Queen 
Elizabeth directed a medal to be struck, with the inscrip- 
tion, " AfHavit Deus, et dissipantur." 

Later still, when England was distracted and convulsed 
by a rebellion, in the interest of the Pretender, represent- 
ing the House of Stuart, that synonym for bigotry and 
despotism, against the House of Hanover, on the final 
termination of the eventful strife which " secured every 
thing to be esteemed, and delivered from every thing 
that could be apprehended by a Protestant and free 
people," a day was set apart for public thanksgiving, the 
extraordinary observance of which has been preserved in 
the charming description of Addison. Not now to speak 
of those many occasions for thanksgiving which were 
observed by the feeble colonies of America, in view of 
special deliverances which must have persuaded even 
Atheism to believe in a Superintending Providence, there 
was one which deserves a particular mention as appoint- 
ed by the first President of the country. It will be re- 
membered that, shortly after the American Revolution, 
and the formation of the Federal Constitution, chiefly 



American Nationality. 



owing to burdensome taxation consequent upon the war, 
and to misconstructions of the name and the spirit of 
liberty, there were several attempts at unlawful insurrec- 
tion against the government by armed forces in -Massa- 
chusetts and Pennsylvania — attempts which to us, at this 
distance, seem to have been contemptible, but which at 
the time occasioned no little anxiety to the friends of 
order. On the complete suppression of the spirit of 
rebellion, which occurred during the lifetime and the office 
of George Washington, he issued a proclamation for Na- 
tional Thanksgiving, affixing to it, with his own signature, 
the seal of the United States — a document which cannot 
be too frequently recommended, for the excellence of its 
sentiments and the beauty of its expression. 

NATIONAL THANKSGIVING. 

A Proclamation. 

By the President of the United States of America. 

When we review the calamities which afflict so many 
other nations, the present condition of the United States 
affords much matter of consolation and satisfaction. Our 
exemption hitherto from foreign war ; an increasing pros- 
pect of the continuance of that exemption ; the great 
degree of internal tranquillity we have enjoyed ; the recent 
confirmation of that tranquillity by the suppression of an 
insurrection which so wantonly threatened it ; the happy 
course of our public affairs in general ; the unexampled 
prosperity of all classes of our citizens — are circumstances 
which peculiarly mark our situation with indications of 
the Divine beneficence towards us. In such a state of 



316 



Thanksgiving. 



things, it is, in an especial manner, our duty as a people, 
with devout reverence and affectionate gratitude, to ac- 
knowledge our many and great obligations to Almighty 
God, and to implore Him to continue and confirm the 
blessings we experience. 

Deeply penetrated with this sentiment, I, George 
Washington, President of the United States, do recom- 
mend to all religious societies and denominations, and to 
all persons whomsoever within the United States, to set 
apart and observe Thursday, the nineteenth day of Feb- 
ruary next, as a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, 
and on that day to meet together and render their sincere 
and hearty thanks to the Great Ruler of Nations for the 
manifold and signal mercies which distinguish our lot as 
a nation — particularly for the possession of constitutions 
of government which unite, and by their union establish 
liberty with order; for the preservation of our peace, 
foreign and domestic ; for the seasonable control which 
has been given to a spirit of disorder in the suppression 
of the late insurrection ; and generally for the prosperous 
course of our affairs, public and private ; and, at the same 
time, humbly and fervently to beseech the kind Author 
of these blessings graciously to prolong them to us ; to 
imprint on our hearts a deep and solemn sense of our 
obligations to Him for them ; to teach us rightly to 
estimate their immense value ; fo preserve us from the 
arrogance of prosperity, and from hazarding the advan- 
tages we enjoy by delusive pursuits; to dispose us to 
merit the continuance of His favors by not abusing them, 
by our gratitude for them, and by a correspondent conduct 
as citizens and as men ; to render this country more and 



American Nationality. 317 

more a safe and propitious asylum for the unfortunate of 
other countries ; to extend among us true and useful 
knowledge ; to diffuse and establish habits of sobriety, 
order, morality, and piety ; and, finally, to impart all the 
blessings we possess, or ask for ourselves, to the whole 
family of mankind. 

In testimony whereof, I have caused the seal of the 
United States of America to be affixed to these 
presents, and signed the same with my hand. 
[l. s.] Done at the city of Philadelphia, the first day of 
January, one thousand seven hundred and ninety- 
five, and of the Independence of the United States 
of America the nineteenth. 

GEORGE WASHINGTON. 

By the President : 

Edm. Randolph. 

Happy would it have been for the American people, 
if the counsels of this Proclamation had at all times 
inspired and governed our entire population. Never was 
there a people having such occasions and obligations for 
gratitude to God Almighty, as the inhabitants, and all 
the inhabitants, of this country, invited again by their 
President to sit down together at a national love-feast, 
and speak together of things which pertain to our coun- 
try's life and unity and strength and glory. I say this 
with a full knowledge of many things to be regretted and 
deplored in the past ; with the memory of many things, 
in every direction, which never can be approved and 
justified ; without abating or modifying, in one jot or tittle, 
our previous judgment in* regard to many measures, and 



Thanksgiving. 



many utterances of individuals, and sections, and parties ; 
with a full and fresh conviction of all the woes and 
burdens connected with that war out of which we have 
just emerged; remembering the untold numbers, and 
those among the flower and vigor of the land, who have 
been swept into gory graves by the tornado of battle ; 
all whose names will never be known, till the earth and 
the sea give up their dead, at the trump and muster-roll 
of the Last Day; with a most vivid impression of the 
many families who observe this day with weeds on their 
persons, and vacancies at their hearths and tables ; keep- 
ing before me, too, the fact, that large portions of our 
country cannot speak of victory and triumph, but are 
conversant with defeat and disappointment, chagrin and 
impoverishment, with little disposition to festivity, and 
we know not what antipathies and hostilities still rank- 
ling at the heart; with the fullest persuasion as to the 
gravity of questions yet on our hands, undecided, pregnant 
with momentous issues for the future of America ; not 
forgetting how many things have been said and done which 
we could have wished had not been, how many things 
there are now, and may be and will be, probably, contrary 
to our own preferences and judgments, — yet with all these 
abatements, and shadows, and apprehensions, we say it 
again, and that with the profound est convictions of its 
truth, never was there a country having so much to stir 
the gratitude of a whole people, as our own dear, torn, 
bleeding, reunited, regenerated America. If, after the 
manner of the ancients, who chronicled celebrated events 
with appropriate medals, we were to symbolize our coun- 
try at the present time, we would represent her with 



American Nationality. 



a tear in her eye, for her dead children — a tear, not like 
those of Niobe in cold despair, but glistening with the 
pride of self-sacrifice for a cause great and good ; and not- 
withstanding that tear, radiant, calm, strong, cheerful, 
attended by the two forms of Security and Hope, the 
one, as the old Roman coins present her, leaning against 
a pillar, conscious that its strength cannot be moved ; 
and the other, "jocund, tip-toe," with her robes drawn 
back, in the posture of walking, as not to be encumbered 
or delayed, when pressing forward in a brighter and more 
magnificent career. 

Wishing to avoid every thing like cheap and vulgar 
declamation, and to present something like a true analysis 
of American Nationality, with the reasons for rejoicing 
over its preservation, and the method and spirit by which 
it is to be perpetuated, let us briefly allude, by way of 
preface, to the wonderful changes through which we have 
recently passed — changes so astounding as to task our 
own senses and credulity. Had it been told us one year 
ago, when we met, as it were on the deck of the ship, 
tossing and thumping among the breakers, just where and 
what that ship would be to-day, tight and taut in hull 
and rigging, the battle and the storm both passed, and 
halcyon days returned, with smooth seas and bright skies, 
and the nation's flag high at the mast-head, undimmed, 
untorn, unblemished, not one of us would have believed 
the half of what is now fact and truth. According to the 
curious calculation of Sir Isaac Newton, the comet of 
1680 imbibed so much heat by its approaches to the sun, 
that it would have been two thousand times hotter than 
red-hot iron had it been a globe of that metal ; and that, 



3 2 ° 



Thanksgiving. 



supposing it as big as the earth and at the same distance 
from the sun, it would be fifty thousand years in cooling 
down to its natural temper ! Considering the ferments 
and excitements into which we have been wrought during 
the last four years of war, and the intense heat of the 
passions in all parts of the country, many entered into 
very curious computations of how many years, some 
despairing of any thing short of several centuries, before 
we should cool into comfort and moderation. Was there 
ever a transition so sudden, so general, so complete as 
that which, within a few months, has taken place in our 
affairs ? There is a deep meaning in the fact, of import- 
ant use, as testimony, when we come to speak of the 
history and elements of our nationality, that those who 
had taken arms against the government at last so prompt- 
ly and universally abandoned a struggle which they saw 
to be useless ; for, notwithstanding words of passionate 
hostility, there was a latent love and pride for the old 
flag, which could not be exterminated, making that sub- 
mission at last easy and complete, which never would 
have been reached at all, if there had been no misgiv- 
ing at heart as to the rightfulness and necessity and 
honor of their cause. The war has ceased. I do not 
say that all which Tacitus meant by his expression, 
recentibus odiis, the yet fresh resentments, passions and 
prejudices of contemporary antagonists, have entirely 
disappeared ; but war, with its flames and desolation, its 
musterings and its shoutings, its shocks and din, and gar- 
ments rolled in blood, has ended, and ended so that, as 
we believe, it will never be renewed, on that issue, so long 
as the sun and the moon shall endure. According to 



American Nationality, 



321 



that inimitable description given us by Virgil in the first 
book of the ^Eneid, Military Fury is shut up in the 
temple of Janus, and laden with chains, sitting 

High on a trophy raised of useless arms. 

The immense armies which were mustered for the 
service of the country have been disbanded. Contrary 
to many predictions, domestic and foreign, they have re- 
turned to their pacific pursuits, quietly and softly as the 
snows massed on the mountains melt away in the spring 
and trickle down in streams which fertilize a continent. 
And to-day, notwithstanding all forebodings, and threats, 
and reasonable expectations, and precedents, there is not 
a single man throughout our vast domain who is in armed 
rebellion against the lawful government of the country. 
Not only is there no army, no ship, no fort, no regiment, 
no corporal's guard, but not one roving squad, not one 
guerrilla band, in all the fastnesses of the mountains, not 
one soldier, not one citizen, of any description, in arms 
and array against the government of the United States ; 
and such is the change of affairs, and such the dearth of 
news consequent upon the change, that we, who a few 
months ago held our breath as we read of hundreds of 
thousands engaged in deadly conflict, and had our minds 
in the highest pitch of expectation day and night, now 
languidly open our morning papers to find a whole page 
headed with startling capitals to catch the eye, covered 
with the harmless advertisement of a sewing machine, 
a quack medicine, or the important intelligence an- 
nounced by the telegraph — amused at its own feat — that a 
fishing sloop from Massachusetts Bay has arrived at 
14* 



3 22 



Thanksgiving. 



Fortress Monroe ; that the travelling agent of the old 
Peace Society has begun a new course of lectures ; and 
that some dozen or two of adventurers and refugees, 
some of whom were dressed in Federal uniforms, have 
been shaking fists at each other from the opposite banks 
of the Rio Grande. 

We should not say that the highest state of national 
prosperity was indicated by the entire absence of all ex- 
citing causes, according to the old Dutch conception, in 
which life moves on like the canals of Holland, " no 
breakers, no waves, not a froth-bubble on the surface," 
men and animals together never in a hurry, slow and 
sleek and heavy ; or, in accordance with the Chinese 
idea, stamped on the very faces of the people, repre- 
senting the flat, monotonous life of we know not how 
many centuries ; nevertheless, when a people who are 
excitable to the last degree, like a swarming hive, buz- 
zing and humming, when roused by alarms, have sub- 
sided into that condition in which they have nothing to 
report out of the ordinary course of events, it betokens 
that the flood of waters has abated, that the swollen 
streams have returned to their quiet channels, that the 
bow is out in the sky, and the meadows give forth a 
goodly smell. 

It is of our nationality — our American nationality, 
as preserved and vindicated, that I treat, as the great 
event of the hour. Other things there are of which we 
may be proud, for which we should be thankful, but this 
is the one fact which sheds importance on all others, and 
which so defines and describes the true issue of our civil 
war, if not to all just now, yet to all ere long, to the 



American Nationality. 323 

entire North, South, East, and West of our common coun ■ 
try, that it will be the occasion of devout and fervent grati- 
tude. It is this spirit of nationality which has prevailed and 
triumphed. By this, I do not mean that there has been, 
or is now, or will be, complete unity of sentiment in regard 
to public measures, or the administration of public affairs, 
but it is of comparatively small account what differences 
of opinion may exist in regard to all subordinate matters, 
so long as there is above all, beneath all, an honest at- 
tachment to the national life, and an undivided purpose 
that it shall be preserved. A serpent with one head and 
many tails, will glide through a thicket much easier than 
another serpent with many heads and one tail. Differ- 
ences of opinion, likings and dislikings, attractions and 
repulsions of party — differences running to all widths 
between slavery and anti-slavery, and I care not what be- 
side — these are only the caudal extremities of our growth 
and motion ; and it is because at the other end, leading 
the whole movement, there was but one head representing 
the purpose and spirit of our nationality, that we have 
worked our way safely through the tangled thickets with- 
out wounding or tearing off any portions of the body, 
and dragging after us into the common triumph the many 
tails of discord, which, had they been foremost, would 
have torn us apart into many bleeding fragments. 

Cicero recommends Pompey to his countrymen, on 
the ground that he was always fortunate, and so great 
was the importance attached to success by the Roman 
people, that some of the emperors adopted the title of 
Fortunatus among their highest designations. It is not 
merely because the interest we have espoused has been 



Thanksgiving. 



crowned with success, that we are called to unite in thanks 
before God ; but on the higher ground, that the nationality 
which has been re-asserted and reestablished involves in- 
terests of the highest magnitude to every part of our 
country, to generations yet unborn, and to all the pros- 
pects of Christian civilization throughout the whole 
world. It is upon this high table-land that we would 
take our stand. Something of an effort may be re- 
quired to reach it. Inasmuch as many are always prone 
to confound petty details with ultimate inductions, pri- 
vate grievances with vast public interests, I must ask 
each one of my readers, under the inspirations of the 
hour, to put out of his mind every thing which pertains to 
party and section, every thing of local partiality and per- 
sonal preference, and to rise to those summits whence we 
can calmly and dispassionately survey the goodliness and 
greatness of our American nationality. As I shall speak 
of what is implied m that term, I beg him to take off his 
eyes from the eddies and back-water of the stream, from 
the drift-wood and weeds — every thing that is unsightly 
which is borne along on the surface— and survey awhile 
the depth and breadth and length and magnificence of 
the Great River itself, which maketh glad the city of our 
God. Differences of opinion exist among intelligent 
citizens as to the origin, the causes, the conduct, the men, 
and the measures of the war • and nothing is so long- 
lived as ancestral prejudices and educated partialities. 
We are told of the old Tory of former times, who could 
not be accosted by a neighbor in the street with the usual 
remark about the weather, without replying that there had 
been no good weather since the Revolution. Judging 



American Nationality. 



3 2 5 



from the style adopted by certain men and newspapers, 
we should infer that there was a faction existing in this 
country, consisting of the President, the Senate, the House 
of Representatives, and the Supreme Court; and that 
whenever there happens to be a majority of one opinion, 
Congress has no power to make laws. Here is a man who 
has nothing to say or do but grumble about matters which 
are only incidental and parenthetical to the great move- 
ment. One can see nothing but the temporary suspension 
of the writ of Habeas Corpus ; another groans under the 
burdens of taxation, and revolts at the injustice of the 
income tax. One thinks it a very hard matter that his 
rebel cousin, when taken prisoner, was not treated like a 
gentleman, with fine linen and sumptuous fare ; and 
actually complains because an army, marching through a 
country in hostility, did not leave every thing just as nice 
and genteel as after a pacific parade. It is no secret 
that some men entertain opinions of the widest extremes 
in regard to slavery. One goes the length of regarding it 
as a divine institution, to be conserved and perpetuated 
and, of course, seeing little else than misery and wrong 
and poverty and woe in the sudden liberation of the 
slaves ; while at the opposite side are those who regard 
the extinction of slavery as the sole issue and object of 
the war ; who, oblivious of the sentiment recorded on a 
certain occasion by President Lincoln, "with slavery 
or without it, the Union must be preserved," hold 
every other occasion for gratitude subordinate to this, 
that African slavery is forever abolished. Outside of all 
these conflicting opinions, beyond and above private 
complaints, personal disappointments or congratulations, 



326 



Thanksgiving. 



prejudices, passions, traditions of place and education, 
we sweep a wider induction and climb that higher ground, 
where law and duty, loyalty and love, memory and mercy, 
justice and hope, patriotism and religion, invoke all the 
people to praise for the continued and invigorated life 
of the nation. 

Am I required to explain what is meant by our na- 
tionality, and how much it includes ? It would not be 
possible within the compass of a chapter to combine and 
retain all the thoughts and memories which come rushing 
upon us, at the proposal of such a question. We should 
feel obliged, in framing a full and correct answer, to un- 
fold the true theory as to the object and import of civil 
government as a divine ordinance, with a careful state- 
ment of the reasons, which, on ethical grounds, justify one 
revolution, because government is perverted and oppres- 
sive, and condemn another as wanton and criminal be- 
cause government is benignant and liberal ; with some 
delineation of the enormous consequences which would 
ensue upon the admission that governments pronounced 
to be good may be assaulted and resisted at the whim 
and passion of any. We should be constrained to go back, 
through ancient protests and memorable struggles, to 
historic roots and forces, to lay bare the vital origin of our 
nationality, leading you through the galleries of the past, 
and bidding you to look at the faces of great men, and the 
pictures of great events. We should take you to Geneva, 
and Frankfort, and Leyden ; and repeat what was ac- 
complished in Britain in successive protests against 
despotism, the history of the long Parliament, the achieve- 
ments of Hampden, and Cromwell, and Harrington, and 



American Nationality. 327 

Pym, and Sidney, and Milton, and Russell — America in 
embryo, Jacob struggling with Esau in the womb of 
British history, America on British soil, — and the birth of 
liberty after long and perilous throes — liberty not flushed 
and licentious, but chaste and severe, wedded to law, 
the pledge of order and peace. We should be sure to 
tell you of what stuff the American colonies were severally 
composed, what extraordinary conjunctions of events, 
what reservations of this American continent, till the right 
moment in the dramatic movement ; how the colonies 
distinct in origin and character, were from the first 
attracted, by a common instinct of self-preservation, to- 
gether ; how separation from the Old World was accom- 
plished throughout by a Federal sympathy and power — in 
the words of Hamilton : " The Union and Independence 
of the States, blended and incorporated in one and the 
same act ; " of the independence of the country, declared 
by the American Continental Congress, and fought to a 
successful issue, in and by the union of all the States ; 
one in heart, one in toil ; how notwithstanding the cabals, 
of small men, North and South were interfused and 
intermixed, now a Northern general commanding in 
Southern battles, and now a Southern general in the 
Middle and Northern States, while out of the centre of the 
continent, as representing the heart of the whole move- 
ment, and presiding over it, arose that august form of 
Washington, who knew nothing, thought of nothing but the 
whole country, and so the independence of America was 
achieved by the union of America. Then we would re- 
hearse the history of our national Constitution, the rea- 
sonings of that extraordinary man, Alexander Hamilton, 



3 28 



Thanksgiving. 



the right hand of Washington, who was so quick to fore- 
see that a league could not serve as a government ; that 
confederacies, having subserved their time and purpose, 
were to give place to an organized nationality ; how that 
nationality arose, not by a timid mending and patching 
of the old articles, but by the higher action of a direct 
representation of the People of all the States, assembled 
in conventions, a new Government and a new Constitu- 
tion, which, leaving undisturbed many rights and powers 
of the several States, assumed the grander and more impe- 
rial, the sole right of making war and peace, of diplomacy, 
the issuing of coin, the only coin of the country supersed- 
ing all State mottoes and devices, with E pluribus unum 
upon its face, the adoption of a national flag, and so the 
birth of a full-grown and blessed nationality. We should 
be sure to repeat to you, as the exponent of that time and 
history, the counsels of Washington, our American Moses, 
in his farewell address, that sweet and noble Deutero- 
nomy of our annals, with its warnings against sectional 
jealousies and geographical distinctions ; his noble heart 
beating to its last throb in pride and love and hope for 
the American Nation. With wonder should we tell 
how the country grew and prospered, how the flag was 
borne upon every sea, and was a protection to every 
citizen ; how territory was enlarged and populated, 
a vast tract of country, known as Louisiana, large 
enough afterwards to be partitioned off into several 
states, was ceded by France, to what ? — to whom ? To 
Arkansas ? To Missouri ? They were not yet in exist- 
istence ; but to the United States. We would dwell 
on the marvellous ease with which the Federal 



American Nationality. 



Constitution adapted itself to new territories, and new 
exigencies, and so commerce flourished and agriculture 
smiled, and the arts prospered, and peace reigned, and 
the fourth of July was celebrated North and South, and 
East and West, and the foot of every child marked time 
to the simple, soul-stirring old music of our nationality. 
Nor should we leave out of account how, as exciting 
questions arose, and sectional collisions were imminent, 
men were prepared for the emergency, whose names be- 
long no more to States but to the Nation ; Henry Clay, 
whose sweet, persuasive, and limpid speech, in defence of 
all that was national, was like his of old, on whose lips the 
bees of Hymettus were said to settle ; and that other form, 
grand, imposing, never to be forgotten, as one who, by 
his special study and eloquence, made ready the country 
for that struggle out of which it has just emerged, Daniel 
Webster, known as the Defender of the Constitution, and 
whose matchless words, on more than one occasion, so 
moved the heart of this whole people, that, long after his 
argument was finished, they turned towards him, in 
breathless delight, as Adam to the discourse of the angel ; 

" The Angel ended, and in Adam's ear 
So charming left his voice, that he awhile 
Thought him still speaking, still stood fixed to hear." 

If any thing more were necessary to complete the con- 
ception of our nationality, I would bid you glance at the 
geography of America, and mark in what direction run 
the ranges of its mountains and its great rivers, the 
outlets of commerce — physical characters, in which God 
Almighty has written out the unity of our nation ; and 




when, by all these lessons of history, these memories 
of the past, remote and recent, we are possessed of 
some idea of what is meant by America — America 
as a whole, as an organized and distinctive nation- 
ality — let us remember that the progress of events is 
not to be arrested or reversed, that history is not to be 
turned backwards, according to the sagacious sentiment 
which John Hampden adopted on his coat of arms, 
" Vestigia nulla retrorsum " (" No steps backwards ") ; 
and when all this is full in your mind, I ask you what 
shall we think of the conduct of men, in any quarter, 
speaking disparagingly of our nationality ; what of the 
audacious crime of striking at the heart of such a govern- 
ment, wantonly and without cause ; and what is your in- 
stinctive sentiment in regard to men who would peep the 
name of a State in contempt of the grander name, the 
United States of America; who had wrought them- 
selves into such a frenzy of the imagination that they 
were willing to lower the national flag to a foreign protec- 
torate ; that men could be found who had so far for- 
gotten the pride and honor and independence of their 
country, that, to accomplish their unnatural purposes, they 
actually crept round, through Nassau and Canada, British 
provinces, to ask for sympathy and aid from British 
authority — hanging all their hopes on British recognition, 
fawning about the British ministry, and crawling for pro- 
tection under the paws and the tail of the British lion. 
Thank God, the nation lives ! If we never understood it 
before, we know, we feel that we are a nation now. Our 
independence, at last, is completed. Henceforth we shall 
make our own laws and our own language. If we choose 



American Nationality. 



33 1 



to adopt a new word expressive of a new thing, we shall 
certainly do it at our pleasure. We shall be Americans 
throughout ; we shall manufacture our own goods, cast our 
own cannon, enact our own notions, honor our own flag, 
do things in our own way, dispose of our own criminals, 
hang our own rebels, and dispense justice or mercy ac- 
cording to our own convictions, as lawfully expressed by 
the chosen authorities of the country, without regard to 
malcontents at home,, and without asking permission of 
any body abroad. 

Does any one hesitate to give praises, loud and hearty, 
for the preservation of our nationality ? They may not 
admit it just now, in the suddenness of their reverses, and 
the uncooled ardor of their passion ; but no portion of 
the country has more real occasion for gratitude over the 
issue of the war, than the very States by which the war 
was inaugurated. We shudder to think what consequences 
must inevitably have ensued, sooner or later, if they had 
succeeded in the purpose of breaking away from the 
Federal Union. Does any man in his senses, who knows 
any thing of human nature, of history, of America, believe 
that a confederacy, based on the very principle of seces- 
sion, could for any time be held together by that princi- 
ple ? Would not the very centrifugal passions, which 
whirled them out of the sphere of nationality, have 
entailed the certainty of subsequent explosions, throwing 
them into contemptible fragments with petty rivalries, 
intestine wars, imposts at every border, custom-houses 
and guards at every boundary ; without dignity, without 
security, without strength, without a common flag ? Well 
for them, and for us all, that the ever-recurring revolutions 



33 2 Thanksgiving. 

of Mexico and of South America have not been brought 
nearer to us, to be repeated on our own soil. Grateful 
should we be, that this question has been settled, in our 
own times, and is not to be bequeathed to our children. 
Nor is there less occasion for gratitude, that the mainte- 
nance of our nationality is for the interest of well-regulated 
liberty throughout the world. It has proved that liberty 
is not weakness but strength ; that our nationality is the 
strongest of all governments, because its roots are in the 
hearts of a free people. It was because they doubted 
this fact of the strength of a democratic government to 
protect itself against internal foes, that our success was 
doubted by foreign powers. But the result has demon- 
strated, to the delight of all friends of free institutions 
throughout the world, that our nationality was never so 
strong as when enemies out of its own household rose up 
against it ; when the very head of the country fell in- 
stantly by cruel assassination ; and that, to-day, it stands 
self-poised, calm, and triumphant. 

Had the issue of this war been otherwise, leaving us 
fractured and despicable, the shadow on the dial of Time 
would have gone back we know not how many degrees, 
and wails and dirges would have been tolled off in all 
the turrets of the air. God has been merciful unto us, 
and blessed us ; that his way may be known upon earth, 
his saving health among all nations. 

Thus far I have confined myself purposely to one 
topic, the preservation of our nationality, from the 
clear conviction that, in every event, the best thing 
for the white man and the black man, the Northern 
man and the Southern man, and every man in America, 



American Nationality, 



333 



Europe, Africa, and Asia, was that this free republic, 
this constitutional government, which unites liberty 
and order, should be maintained inviolate. It was 
from this conviction, that, with all our innate abhorrence 
of human slavery, as entailed upon this country by 
the mother land, against American protests and expostu- 
lations, many were disposed to counsel moderation and 
patience, and time for the working out of remedial, ra- 
tional, and legal methods. But how marvellous are the 
ways of God, transcending all our wisdom and fore- 
thought ! Who of us ever dreamed that in our day, as 
the result of unanticipated events, slavery would be ex- 
terminated, and that the Southern States themselves 
would take part with the majority of all the States, by a 
legal amendment of the National Constitution, to secure 
its complete extinction ! It was here, as it has always 
been, in the wisdom of Divine Providence ; crime was 
made the instrument of its own defeat ; reviving the les- 
son of the old fable, that they who fight against the gods, 
blow fire and ashes into their own faces ; and they who 
sought to dethrone the lawful government of die country, 
were buried under their own Ossa and Pelion. Slavery 
has killed itself in America. Let all the people say, 
Amen. Henceforth it cannot be an element of national 
politics ; henceforth its removal will be for the national 
peace and purity and morals and honor. So let us thank 
the Almighty for an issue which has been of his own 
working, far above all the wisdom and power of man. 
The cancer is cured, but the man lives ; the defect in the 
facade is removed, but the Temple stands stronger and 
firmer than ever. 



334 



Thanksgiving. 



That the loyal people of this country are, on every 
ground, disposed to be magnanimous and lenient to those 
who called themselves our enemies, needs not be argued. 
Whether enough has been done in the way of solemn 
justice, to mark public abhorrence of the crime of 
wanton rebellion, to stamp it with infamy forever • 
whether the hanging of a few miscreants, convicted 
of arson, and cruelty to prisoners, is a sufficient asser- 
tion and vindication of justice, in view of the tremen- 
dous calamities which have been brought upon the 
American people by this rebellion, may safely be left to 
the decision of those who are invested with constitu- 
tional authority and power in the premises. But in 
regard to the Southern people, many of them misled 
and wronged, patience, kindness, magnanimity without 
stint — on one condition — and but one : good faith 
and honor and loyalty now to the government of the 
United States. Every thing can be forgiven ; every thing 
can be healed ; every thing can be restored, if there be 
complete confidence as to the sincerity of the oath of 
allegiance to the National Flag and Constitution. To 
ask that every man should say that at no time had he 
any sympathy with the movement which overspread his 
whole State, to demand that men should accomplish the 
feat, surpassing all achievements of jugglery, of swallow- 
ing themselves bodily, that in an instant there should be 
a complete reversal of all habits of thought, and liking 
of institutions to which they were attached from birth, 
is too much to expect of mortal imperfection. But what 
is demanded, and that most reasonably, is that, accepting 
the issue of the appeal to arms which they invoked, they 



American Nationality, 



335 



should now abide by the issue in duty to the national 
government. Time and patience and social intercourse 
and commerce will accomplish the rest. If I am not 
mistaken, words have fallen in some quarters, sometimes 
from fair lips, reasoning under prejudice, that the oath of 
allegiance was merely a form, a matter of policy, to be 
taken with mental reservations, and private evasions and 
intentions, by which it may afterwards be broken. The 
taking of this oath is no coup d'etat. Let there be so 
much as a suspicion that it is not taken in good faith, and 
the foundations of civil society are dropped out. Euripi- 
des, the great tragic poet of Athens, once introduced a 
person into a play, who, being reminded of an oath he 
had taken, replied, " I swore with my mouth, but not 
with my heart." The impiety of the sentiment set the 
audience in an uproar. Socrates, the friend of the 
author, swept out of the theatre in indignation. And 
Euripides himself, so great was the offence, was publicly 
accused and arraigned and brought to trial, as having 
suggested an evasion of what was thought the most holy 
and indissoluble bond of society.* 

Social changes impose new social obligations. Those 
who have been suddenly, by the convulsions of the war, 
thrown up out of slavery, are to be the wards of the na- 
tional justice and humanity. We cannot yield assent to 
all the theories which have been put forth in regard to 
their immediate and unconditional rights of suffrage. It 
has been argued, for example, ingeniously, but sophis- 
tically, that suffrage is a natural right. If it is so, when 



* Freeholder, p. 420. 



33^ 



Thanksgiving. 



does it begin ? at birth ? when a child can hold a piece of 
paper ? Does it belong exclusively to one sex ? Plainly, 
suffrage is not a natural but a political right, and the 
time when it shall be exercised, and the persons by whom 
it shall be exercised, are and must ever be fixed by the 
civil power — the State itself. What more can be asked, 
or conceded, in regard to this right of suffrage — the most 
sacred and high and solemn that a freeman can hold, — 
but that whatever qualifications an intelligent community 
shall prescribe, the same shall be allowed impartially, 
without distinction of color. More than this would be to 
overturn the old foundations of intelligence and virtue 
on which our free institutions are built. 

God grant that the kindly sentiments which gratitude 
inspires may foster the purpose, hereafter to do every 
thing that an intelligent, self-governed Christian people 
can do for the honor and interest of our whole country. 
Well may we adopt the sentiment worn as a frontlet by 
a great man in former times : " Serve God and be cheer- 
ful." * Not content with what is generally understood 
by being good citizens — honest, just, and true — we should 
cultivate more the specific and grander affection of pa- 
triotism. Exercising the rights of freemen to criticise 
public men and public measures, as we would not mis- 
lead foreign observation, or harm and mislead ourselves, 
let us, in a higher region, and with a mightier sentiment 
be sensitive to all which affects the honor of our nation- 
ality. There is something to be admired in that which 
has occurred in the civil wars of history, that before bat- 



* Inservi Deo, et laetam. 



American Nationality. 



337 



tie commenced, the pavilion or the position of the king 
should be designated, so that no harm should come to his 
person who represented the life of the nation. Something 
to be honored, is the custom of the Persian ambassador to 
the countries of Western Europe, bringing with him a sod 
of his native soil, to be looked at every day, so to be re- 
minded of the country with whose honor he was entrusted. 
Without counselling anything which is romantic and vain- 
glorious, let us be grateful for the land which God has 
given us, the Constitution bequeathed to us, the Govern- 
ment given to us anew, as preserved amid unprecedented 
trials, grateful for the names and services of great men, 
the principles, ideas, and successes, which America has 
furnished already as a succor and hope for other nations, 
and confident as to what Christian liberty will yet do 
for the world ; the cross symbolizing what Christ has 
done for individual man; the flag what Christian men 
may do and organize for themselves ; that flag to-day the 
same which rustled over us in our childhood, to be the 
same for ever, we trust — changed only as new stars shall 
come out upon its azure firmament, but losing none ; let 
us rise above all the asperities, the griefs, the perplex- 
ities of the hour, and rehearse, we and our children, now 
and always, those grand old words of the Hebrew poet, 
which inspiration has left us for the very purpose of ex- 
pressing, as no other words ever can, our love for our 
whole country and our religious convictions as to the 
relations of our unbroken, united, harmonized America 
to the world : 

Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised in 
the city of our god, in the mountain of hls holi- 
15 



338 



Thanksgiving. 



ness. We have thought of thy loving kindness, O 
God, in the midst of thy temple. According to thy 
name, O God, so is thy praise unto the ends of the 
earth ; thy right hand is full of righteousness. 
Walk about Zion, and go round about her : tell 
the towers thereof. mark ye well her bulwarks, 
consider her palaces : that ye may tell it to the 
generation following. for this god is our god 
for ever and ever. 



THE PAST AND THE PRESENT. 



Say not thou, What is the cause that the former days were better 
than these ? for thou dost not inquire wisely concerning this. 

Eccles. iv. 10. 



XVI. 



THE PAST AND THE PRESENT. 

It would seem that even in the days of Solomon, 
some were disposed to disparage their own times, and to 
sigh for those which were gone. They appear to have 
assumed that the " former times were better " than theii 
own ; an assumption which the Preacher affirms not to be 
true. It amuses us, when the old gouty count in Gil Bias 
persists in saying that the peaches were not so good as 
they were in his boyhood. But when the disposition as- 
sumes the grave form of discontent with what is present 
and actual ; complaining of one's own day and generation 
as the worst that ever was known ; we are taught both by 
reason and Scripture to pronounce the habit as most 
pernicious, for it is grafted upon a falsehood. Bad as the 
times may be, they are better and not worse than those 
behind us, and the poorest use to which we can put our 
time and faculties, is to be querulous over those affairs to 
which we are personally related, and to stand, in what is 
called the " barrenness of these degenerate days," Janus- 
faced — one countenance, that which is turned to the 
future, elongated, scowling, and sombre ; while that which 
looks to the past, has an expression of wishfulness, 
smiles, and satisfaction. 



342 



Thanksgiving. 



There is an illusion in regard to the memories of the 
past, which ought to be corrected by a sober judgment. 
It is easy to make the correction so far as it relates to 
our personal life. We recall the period of childhood, as 
one of peculiar happiness. We find delight in recurring 
to the time when, as children, we were welcomed and 
blessed under the roof of our first and earliest home. 
There is good reason why the bright picture should be 
hung up in the gallery of the memory : the house, the 
cheerful fire, the generous table, the cordial greeting, love 
sincere, confidence unsuspected, contentment complete, 
the crystal ice, the new-fallen and resplendent snow ; or, 
that other pleasure, of which a popular writer has said, 
nothing is to be compared with it — " A Child's Midsum- 
mer Holiday — the time, I mean, when two or three of us 
used to go away up the brook, and take our dinners with 
us, and came home at night tired, dirty, happy, scratched 
beyond recognition, with a greasy nosegay, three little 
fish, and one shoe, the other having been used as a boat, 
till it had gone down with all hands out of soundings." * 
So it has been gravely asserted by the same author that 
this was the very happiest period of life ; and that no 
man ever " experiences such pleasure after fourteen, as 
he does before, unless it be in the novel sensation of his 
first love-making." The illusion, so common, is easily 
explained. Conversant with care, pressed with burdens 
peculiar to itself, manhood looks back to the time when 
care was unknown, and burdens and toils were not so 
much as thought to exist. Life mature is put in contrast 



* Charles Kingsley. 



The Past and the Present. 



with life immature, in the strong points of their dissimilar- 
ity, and so the balance is carried to the wrong side. The 
griefs of childhood, real, far more real, than our ripened 
and stronger life remembers, are forgotten. The shades 
in that bright Mosaic are left out. Nothing is accounted 
for or remembered, but the bright hues of careless pleas- 
ure. We drop out of the drag-net of time the sand, 
the sea-weed, the drift-wood, and all which we retain is 
the tinted shell, with its smooth and polished lips, its 
lining of pearl, and its soft murmurs of a receding and 
unwritten music. 

Then, again, the personages change their places, and 
pleasures vary. You cannot crowd a full-grown man 
into the dimensions of the boy. The child has himself 
become a man ; and his enjoyments are of a new name 
and form. He who was once welcomed home as a child, 
now has the pleasure and honor of extending a welcome 
to his own children, who are thus the instruments of 
giving him a double joy, his own and theirs reflected upon 
his larger heart. Spring, summer, autumn, and winter 
are not the same ; each has its uses and its enjoyments, 
and the latest are the richest in fruit-bearing, harvesting, 
and reward. Some pleasures there are which, like some 
diseases, we can have but once. Talk of the first love- 
making as a memorable epoch of life, from which one is 
receding ; it is a fit utterance for a poetaster, for it is a 
fiction. The man, ripe in years and experience, if his 
heart be pure and true and honorable, will tell you how 
his heart has grown deep and broad and large, as an- 
other life has grown into unity with his, in the passing 
of many summers and winters of diversified events 



344 



Thanksgiving. 



and that to him the gray curl which now rests on the 
forehead sanctified by time, is more dear and more beau- 
tiful than the brown and raven tresses which crowned 
that brow of rose and ivory, on which boyhood printed 
its first kiss of pride and passion. 

The illusion which cheats so many in the estimate of 
their present life, affects their judgment in regard to the 
past and present of nations. Their knowledge of history 
is limited to some fiction of life and manners which they 
have received from ballads and romances. They will in- 
sist on placing the " golden age " in times when, in fact, 
kings lived less sumptuously than a prosperous farmer 
to-day j and men and women with titles of nobility were 
destitute of comforts which are now within the reach of 
the common laborer. In spite of all evidence, thousands 
imagine to themselves the social state of past centuries 
as more agreeable and happy than that in which we are 
now living. They are charmed with the "merry Eng- 
land " of Queen Bess, because their only notion of that 
England is derived from the splendid panorama of Kenil- 
worth. They have read the description of an English 
inn, as given by Izaak Walton, the walls covered with 
ballads, the brick floor swept to tidiness, and the sheets 
scented with lavender, such as the honest and quiet fish- 
erman frequented when coming in from the brooks and 
meadows, and immediately he imagines the England of 
Walton's day as a Paradise of cleanliness, comfort, and 
contentment ; when, in fact, the majority of tenements 
had not even a chimney, and floors were generally colored 
brown with a wash made of soot and small-beer, to hide 
the dirt ; and the filth and discomfort of houses, as de- 



The Past and the Present. 



scribed by Erasmus and Hollingshed was so great as, in 
their opinion, to be the cause of fatal epidemics ; and in 
London, taverns were designated by flaming signs of Blue 
Boars and Golden Lions and Saracens' Heads, because 
such a vast proportion of the people could not read 
names and numbers, and so were dependent for direc- 
tion on some form palpable to their senses, the more gro- 
tesque the better. 

It is difficult for us even to imagine what period of 
time, or what stage of history, men disaffected in the 
days of Solomon had in their eye, when they pronounced 
them better than their own, which was the very culmina- 
tion of their national polity. Could it be that any were 
so deluded as to wish that they could exchange their 
condition for a state of anarchy, when every man did 
what was right in his own eyes j when there were no 
roads, nor arts ; when an ox-goad, or the jaw-bone of an 
ass, were the most efficient implements of war, and the 
dissevered limbs and joints of a mutilated woman were 
sent through the tribes as the best summons to battle ? 
or, earlier still, had a nomadic life of tents, and flocks, 
and pastures, its peculiar charms ? It is hard to say 
what age they would imitate, or what state of things they 
would propose for an example. A glory was it, surpass- 
ing all which ordinarily falls to the lot of mortals, to stand 
on the shores of the Red Sea, when it had been crossed, as 
it was by Israel, and chant their songs of praise and de- 
liverance to God Almighty. But these were the very men, 
with God for a protector, and his promise for a cordial, 
who looked backward and sighed for the green meadows 
of Egypt, with nothing better than onions and vassalage. 
15* 



3 46 Th anksgiving. 



In 1679, a period of wonderful heroism, labor, and 
austerity, in our country, a convention was held in New 
England to inquire what was the crying sin which had 
incurred what was called the judgment of God on the 
colonies, and the unanimous conviction was that it was 
to be ascribed to the luxurious and intemperate habits 
of what they pronounced a backsliding and downward 
age j and this at a time when modes of living were so 
rigid and austere as now to excite the sense of the 
mirthful ; when Lady Moody lived in a house nine feet 
high, and Governor Winthrop expended on official dignity 
about as much in a year as an ordinary gentleman of 
our time in a month. Mr. Addison has given us, in 
one of the numbers of the Spectator, a humorous de- 
scription of a valetudinarian who was bent on being sick, 
and reducing himself by spare diet and profuse sweating, 
but who all the time, in spite of himself, was growing 
decidedly corpulent. " At first it might seem strange," 
says Macaulay, " that society, while constantly moving 
forward with eager speed, should be constantly looking 
backward with tender regret. But these two proposi- 
tions, inconsistent as they may appear, can easily be re- 
solved into the same principle. Both spring from our 
impatience of the state in which we actually are. That 
impatience, while it stimulates us to surpass preceding 
generations, disposes us to overrate their happiness. It 
is, in some sense, unreasonable and ungrateful in us to be 
constantly discontented with a condition which is con- 
stantly improving. But in truth, there is constant im- 
provement precisely because there is constant discontent. 
If we were perfectly satisfied with the present we should 



The Past and the Present. 347 

cease to contrive, to labor, to endeavor, to fight with a 
view to the future. And it is natural that, being dissatis- 
fied with the present, we should form a too favorable 
estimate of the past. In truth, we are under a deception 
similar to that which misleads the traveller in the Arabian 
desert. Beneath the caravan all is dry and bare, but far 
in advance and far in the rear is the semblance of re- 
freshing waters. The pilgrims hasten forward, and find 
nothing but sand, where, an hour before, they had seen a 
lake ; they turn their eyes and see a lake where an hour 
before they were toiling through sand. A similar illusion 
seems to haunt nations through every stage of the long 
progress from poverty and barbarism to the highest de- 
gree of opulence and civilization. But if we resolutely 
chase the mirage backward, we shall find it recedes be- 
fore us into the regions of fabulous antiquity." * Perti- 
nent is the apostrophe of Charles Lamb : " Antiquity ! 
thou wondrous charm, what art thou ? that being nothing, 
art everything ! When thou wert, thou wert not antiquity 
— then thou wert nothing, but hadst a remoter antiquity, 
as thou calledst it, to look back to with blind veneration ; 
thou thyself being to thyself flat, jejune, modem/ What 
mystery lurks in this retroversion! The mighty future 
is as nothing, being everything ! The past is everything, 
being nothing." f 

In drawing a comparison between times present and 
past there is an important advantage in taking a survey 
of a considerable period of time, as the whole or the half 
of a century. The movement of society is by actions and 



* History of England, vol. I., p. 396. 



+ Elia, p. 23. 



348 



Thanksgiving 



re-actions. It is not like the current of a rapid river, 
always running on in the same direction. Rather is it 
like the swing of the ocean when the tide is rising. A 
wave comes in, breaks, and rolls back. No one would 
imagine, from a single glance, that there was progress at 
all. Fix your eye steadily for half an hour on one point, 
and you will perceive, with all that flux and reflux of the 
waves, the progress of the tide is onwards and upwards. 
Just so is it with history. Examine it in small and de- 
tached portions, a year, five years, and it is like a single 
wave, which disappoints you by its recoil. Take fifty 
years, the flats and the sea-grass are out of sight, and you 
are struck with the difference between low ebb and a full 
tide. Important events require time for their own eluci- 
dation. You cannot judge of them by their first appear- 
ance; you must wait and see their ultimate effects. 
Events have roots, branches, and fruit. They do not 
ripen in a day. Sir James Mackintosh was not a weak 
and fickle man because of a difference of judgment in his 
earlier and later writings upon the French Revolution. 
This change of opinion was the necessary result of ad- 
vancing time, and so was the proof of serene wisdom. 
Who can doubt that Edmund Burke, if now alive, would 
write very differently, on the effects of the French Revolu- 
tion, from what he did in the year 1790? The progress 
of half a century gives an entirely new aspect to events 
which appear disastrous or hopeful in their first occur- 
rence. 

"The present enlightened age," is an expression 
which has already attained to a cant currency ; and many, 
so deftly rebuked by Douglas of Cavers, regard it with as 



The Past and the Present. 349 



much satisfaction, and the past with as much contempt, 
as if, like Love in Aristophanes, it had been hatched from 
the egg of Night, and all of a sudden had spread its 
radiant wings over the primeval darkness.* Other cen- 
turies have been marked by great events. We call events 
great only from the results to which they lead. Other 
men have labored, and we have entered into their labors. 
We and our children gather fruit from the trees which 
they planted with fear and trembling. The roots of those 
institutions which distinguish our own times lie back in 
other centuries. But there is one circumstance which 
gives to recent years, and the position from which we 
survey them, a decided pre-eminence. The older the 
world is, the more apparent becomes the design of its 
Maker. The comprehensive study of history is like the 
ascent up a mountain,— the higher you climb the more 
you see. It is like the progress of a drama, — the farther 
you advance the more you comprehend of the plot ; as 
events thicken the better do you discern their bearing on 
the catastrophe. 

The close of the last century was marked by the most 
astounding changes. It was a time of general war and 
convulsion. It seemed as if God had arisen to shake 
mightily the earth. Men's hearts were failing them for 
fear, and for looking for those things which were to come 
to pass. A great part of the eighteenth century is re- 
markable for the European wars of succession. Ere the 
century closes, wars of a very different description, — wars 
of principle, — compared with which the contests of the 

* Douglas on the Advancement of Society. 



35° Thanksgiving. 

house of Hapsburgh were children's squabbles, convulse 
the world. At the first movement of the popular mind 
in France, the friends of humanity rejoiced. Great abuses 
were reformed, and good men were hopeful. But the 
huge mass set in motion could not be stayed. The detent 
was wanting, and everything whirled and whizzed to a 
premature and disastrous stoppage. Commotion, pro- 
scription, confiscation, bankruptcy, civil war, foreign war, 
revolutionary tribunals, guillotinades, blood, chaos, fol- 
lowed each other in rapid succession. A military despo- 
tism rises from the confusion and threatens the independ- 
ence of every State of Europe. As the century opens, 
Napoleon was certainly the most remarkable personage 
in the world. We have now reached a point of time 
when we can pronounce with some deliberation upon the 
general effects of his extraordinary career, and of that 
great revolution in the midst of which he emerged. 
There was too much of terror and of mystery in those 
events, at the time of their occurrence, to allow men to 
judge with calmness. There was then scarcely one 
honest friend of liberty whose ardor was not damped and 
whose faith in the high destinies of mankind was not 
shaken. It is now our deliberate opinion that the French 
Revolution, in spite of all its follies and crimes, its atroci- 
ties and sacrifices of human life, was a great blessing to 
the world. Deliverances were wrought, though amid 
plagues, and signs, and wonders. Demons were exorcised, 
even though they raged and foamed, rending and tearing 
their miserable victims. The Colossus of war who be- 
strode Europe, was a rod of iron, by which the Almighty 
dashed in pieces the old despotisms of the world, like 



The Past and the Present. 351 

potters' vessels. Nations were lifted up from under the 
heavy oppressions by which they had long been stifled. 
A revolutionary spirit was abroad all over the world. 
Mountains did not stay it, nor did seas stop it. A new 
idea was thrown into the heart of society, which, of ne- 
cessity, produced explosions and the greatest of changes. 
That idea was the rights of subjects, — the inalienable free- 
dom of man. The world had heard enough before, in all 
forms, of the divine right of kings. The " Rights of Man " 
was the title of the book published by Thomas Paine, 
then in England, in reply to Mr. Burke, who, in his Re- 
flections on the French Revolution, was for defending old 
establishments, notwithstanding their abuses. But those 
establishments, political and ecclesiastical, went down as 
at the breath of God's nostrils. Daylight was admitted 
into the most dark and hopeless regions. Bodies which 
had been regarded dead as the mummies were magnetized 
with a new life. Wars were not confined to the English 
Channel or the Rhine ; they were carried into the remote 
East, and were a day of resurrection to the slumbering 
nations. The French army invades Egypt. " Soldiers," 
says Napoleon to his troops, " from the summit of the 
pyramids forty centuries look down upon you ! " The 
advancing column rolls over the plain of Esdraelon, and 
their flushed and excited commander looks out upon the 
strife from the top of Tabor, where our Lord was trans- 
figured. The concussion is felt throughout the Ottoman 
Empire. The Spanish colonies in Central and South 
America begin a series of struggles for their independence. 
A large force is sent against them, and after a long and 
bloody contest the Spaniards are expelled, and their 



35 2 



Thanksgiving. 



former possessions are created into many republics, of 
divers fortunes and prospects. The civilized world was 
thoroughly overturned and overturned, and society began 
to be organized on new principles, and pervaded by a 
new life. 

It is true, there was a reaction. The spirit of popular 
liberty met with checks and rebuffs. The House of 
Bourbon is re-established. The battle of Waterloo re- 
stores exiled kings, prelates, and aristocracies. "The 
battle and its result," said Robert Hall, " seemed to me 
to put back the clock of the world six degrees." But it 
was only as the recession of a wave or two. The ocean 
was not dammed up. It was inevitable that other revolu- 
tions should come. In 1830 they came again, with less 
of cruelty, less of mistake. In this year the Belgians 
secure their independence, and a new Constitution is 
formed by the representatives of the people according to 
which a new King is elected. In Switzerland an aristo- 
cratical government is exchanged for a democracy. At 
the same time political commotions arise in Germany, 
and constitutional charters are secured for Saxony, Han- 
over, and the electorate of Hesse. A general desire for 
liberty pervades Italy; and there are insurrections in 
Bologna, Modena, and Parma. By the Revolution of the 
Three Days the Papal priesthood of France is again over- 
thrown. In the very same year a revolution occurs at 
Warsaw ; troubles and dissensions break out in Greece \ 
a new organization takes place of the relations between 
the nobility and burghers of Russia ; a general desire of 
representative government prevails in Prussia; and the 
opposition in the British Parliament, backed by the 



The Past and the Present. 353 

people, are strenuous for those national reforms which 
were carried under the Grey Ministry, two years after. 
Nor was this the end. Recent events are but reverbera- 
tions of the first explosion. At each repetition of the 
struggle much has been gained, and former errors and 
excesses avoided. Louis the Sixteenth was beheaded, 
and his wife, the pride of courts, inhumanly murdered. 
Louis Philippe leaves the Tuilleries, the Queen on his 
arm, unmolested, a crowd of revolutionists opening to let 
them pass. In a few instances, Hungary and Italy, we 
have been disappointed as to results. But the end has 
not come yet. There has been a succession of changes 
in the right direction ; and the face of the world to-day 
no more resembles what it was at the close of the last 
century, than the post-diluvian earth was like its appear- 
ance before the flood. There are more written constitu- 
tions defining and securing the rights of subjects, than 
ever existed in the whole history of the world before. 
The increasing intelligence of society has operated most 
beneficially upon the ruling powers. The greatest despo- 
tisms are forced to recede when they encounter national 
sentiments. The veil of separation which the Orientals 
wisely spread before their monarchs, and behind which 
they have remained like idols of dark origin and uncertain 
attributes, has, in continental Europe, been rent to the 
bottom, and kings are held answerable to law, justice, 
and humanity. The late King of Naples was compelled 
to plead at the bar of public opinion, in reply to the letter 
of Mr. Gladstone concerning the atrocities of the Neapo 
litan prisons ; and the Emperor of Austria did not disdain, 
in his recent speech at the imperial dinner in the Hotel 



354 



Thanksgiving. 



de Ville of Paris, to explain and defend his pacific 
policy. 

Perhaps the most striking change which has occurred, 
and this in connection with that revolution and that per- 
sonage in France of whom we have spoken, is in the 
condition and prospects of the Papal Power. Think of 
it as it was when kings stood barefoot at the gate of the 
Pontifical palace, or meekly held the stirrup of the Pope's 
palfrey; and nations forsook their own anointed and 
hereditary monarchs when censured and excommunicated 
by the soi-disa?it successor of St. Peter. France became 
imbued with infidelity. That country which from the 
time of Charlemagne to the present hour has been most 
intimately allied to the risings and fallings of the Papal 
power, — whose vocation, according to Lacordaire,* is the 
defence and propagation of the Papal Church, — it was in 
France that the spirit of infidelity appeared which was 
destined to eat like a canker into the heart of the Papal 
domination. That infidelity began with opposition to 
Papal pretension and Papal cruelty. ' It was allied with 
the nascent spirit of liberty. Had it not been for this it 
would have passed away like the Deism of England, 

* C'etait la nation franque, et la nation franque etait la premiere 
nation catholique donnee par Dieu a. son Eglise. Ce n'est pas moi 
qui decerns cette louange magnifique a. ma patrie ; c'est la papaute 
a qui il a plu, par justice, d'appeler nos rois les fils aines de V Eglise. 
De meme que Dieu a dit a son Fils de toute eternite : Tu es mon 
premier ne ; la papaute a dit a la France : Tu es ma fille ainee. 
Elle a fait plus, s'il est possible ; afin d'exprimer plus energiquement 
ce qu'elle pensait de nous, elle a cree un barbarisme sublime ; elle 
a nomme la France le Royaume christianisswie — " christian issimum 
regnum." — Conferences de Ndtre-Da?ne de Paris, p. 440. 



The Past and the Present. 355 

without leaving any deep furrows in the soil of the coun- 
try. But so it was that French infidelity was provoked 
into being by political abuses, cruelties, and pretensions, 
in the name of religion. The true secret of its power 
was in the zeal with which it espoused the cause of jus- 
tice, freedom and humanity ; till in French literature, and 
French politics, humanity, justice, and freedom became 
identified with infidelity. The French language, at this 
time, was the medium of European intercourse. It was 
spoken at all the courts of the Continent, from the Eng- 
lish Channel to the Bosphorus. The infidelity of Paris 
thus met with a rapid and universal dissemination. It 
spread like the air over the whole of Europe. It was an 
assailant which no police could stop. Freedom from 
superstition was counted an honorable distinction, a 
frontlet of divine inspiration. By means of some inex- 
plicable power, the altars of religion were deserted, the 
mysteries of religion were performed in vacant cathedrals, 
and the priests themselves smiled at their own credulity. 
At this juncture there arose out of the tumultuous ele- 
ments of European society that great aspirant, whose 
military and political tactics were destined to complete 
what infidelity had begun. To the eye of Napoleon the 
Pope of Rome was little more than any other sovereign 
and man. He summons the Pontiff to Paris. The Pope 
threatens him with excommunication. Napoleon heeds 
it no more than a whiff of snow when crossing the St. 
Bernard. The bull of excommunication was issued. It 
was only the advertisement of Pontifical imbecility. 
When Gregory VII. excommunicated Henry IV. of Ger- 
many, his subjects felt themselves absolved from all alle- 



35^ 



Thanksgiving. 



giance to their sovereign, and fled from him as if he had 
been smitten with the pestilence. When Pius VII. ex- 
communicated Napoleon, not a corporal left the French 
army. Undiverted from his purpose, the " man of des- 
tiny " strips the Pontiff of political power. The Papal 
dominions were annexed to France. The French flag 
waves from the castle of St. Angelo. The title King of 
Ronie is conferred by the French Emperor upon his in- 
fant son • and he builds for him a sumptuous palace on 
the Quirinal hill. The Papacy was brought so low as to 
be an object of pity rather than hatred or dread. The 
time came for reaction, as might have been predicted. 
The Pope was reinstated by the allied sovereigns. Ex- 
iled prelates came back to Paris, and the form of the 
prostrate Church was lifted up. To the eye it has been 
recovering from its shame and depression. With all 
which the Papal See has regained, it bears no resem- 
blance to its ancient power. Had it not been for foreign 
protection, the present Pontiff would have been thrown 
into the Tiber by the inhabitants of his own metrop- 
olis. If a Pope is to continue to reign as a temporal 
Prince, it must be with some show of justice and free- 
dom. He must be the patron and defender of human 
rights. Christian faith, which at the close of the last 
century was driven out from continental Europe, has re- 
turned with a better discrimination. Men may be skep- 
tical as to the Papacy without renouncing belief in Chris- 
tainity. Multitudes now deride and scorn the pretensions 
of the Roman Pontiff and his Church, without vaulting 
over into the deism of Robespierre or the frightful athe- 
ism of Clootz. In the latest revolution of Paris, the 



The Past and the Present. 



357 



crucifix was borne in advance of the crowd, and Jesus 
Christ was hailed as the great apostle of Fraternity, 
Equality, and Humanity. The next action is already in 
progress, and millions will learn to discriminate between 
Christianity and Ecclesiasticism, convinced that there is a 
religion which does not oppose reason and justice and 
progress, but is the grand ally and defender of all which 
concerns the true welfare of man. 

The sun of the last century went down amid murky 
clouds. Terrible signs flashed their lurid light across the 
darkened skies ; hecatombs of human lives were sacri- 
ficed ; but who can doubt that, as a consequence of these 
unusual commotions, the century now passing is distin- 
guished above all its predecessors for the increase of lib- 
erty, the security of chartered rights, and, as a necessary 
result, a greater amount, present and prospective, of in- 
telligence, industry, peace, order, and prosperity. These 
convulsive events were as the tornado tearing up the old 
forests by the roots, or the ploughshare overturning the 
soil. It was the day of preparation ; and now we turn 
to the seed-time and the harvest, the golden fruits which 
are waving on a thousand fields. 

A new power has been brought into operation in the 
principle of voluntary association. Men have clasped each 
other's hands, and by means of united strength have ac- 
complished what before had been left to solitary hopes, 
and individual force. The world had not been wanting 
in good men in former centuries ; but their agency, to a 
great extent, has been individual and independent. There 
are traces in their writings of irrepressible longings after 
better opportunities for aggressive action. No sooner had 



358 



Thanksgiving. 



the great changes to which we have adverted taken place, 
than sagacious men felt the impulse to unite their ser- 
vices in the propagation of all truth, and the reform of 
all abuses. No recesses were suffered to remain unex- 
plored ; pretensions are questioned, claims investigated, 
and inquiry, by its ceaseless and corrosive action, is wear- 
ing away those fetters of the mind which keep its facul- 
ties dormant, and limit the range of its powers. Bishop 
Burnet greatly applauds the plan projected by Oliver 
Cromwell, for instituting a council in opposition to the 
Propaganda Fide at Rome. But it has been well demon- 
strated that the power of voluntary association, which 
combines the efforts of all who are favorable to a good 
cause, is mightier in its results than any influence which 
a single monarch could exert ; and individuals every year 
accomplish far more splendid deeds than entered into the 
imagination of Cromwell, in his truly noble conception. 
Thirty years ago, Dr. Channing took occasion to write 
against this increasing power of association, lest it should 
impair individual freedom and responsibility. Wherever 
there is power, caution should attend its use. It is a 
poetic fancy to suppose that all the beauty of private 
beneficence belongs to the days of Sir Roger de Coverley, 
English squires, and patriarchal estates. We believe 
there is more of private charity now, than there was 
before associated power began to change the face of the 
world. This is an influence which supplies deficiencies 
of individuals and of governments, in attaining ends which 
they cannot reach. It is a greater discovery than the 
mariner's compass. There is no object to which this 
power cannot adapt itself, no resources which it may not 



The Past and the Present. 359 

ultimately command ; and a few individuals, instead of 
being isolated as were good men before, can lay the foun- 
dations of undertakings which would have baffled the 
might of those who reared the pyramids.* 

The isolation of nations in former ages, was obviously 
intended by God. He defeated the purpose of those 
who sought to centralize power on the plains of Shinar. 
Diversities of languages, a range of mountains, a river or 
a sea, separated and secluded tribes and nations. Quick 
and easy communication is a feature of these times of 
fraternity and humanity. Little did the first observer, 
who watched the rattle of the lid on a tea-kettle, from the 
power of confined steam, dream what changes would be 
wrought in the world by that new agent, which then forced 
itself on his attention. Little did James Watt, the Duke 
of Bridgewater, Earl Stanhope, his eccentric sister, Lady 
Hester, and Robert Fulton, when experimenting upon 
several scientific properties and practical uses of vapor, 
conceive that they were God's agents for bringing about 
some of the greatest moral revolutions of the world. 
When at last, in the year 1807, Fulton succeeded in get- 
ting under weigh the little steamboat Clermont, with her 
head up the Hudson — a few are yet living who remember 
well the jeers and jests of the day, — highly gratified as 
he was with the success of his experiment, little did he 
imagine that he was giving to the world a providential 
agent, which, by the stroke of a piston, was to diffuse 
knowledge, liberty, and religion over all the earth. 

* Douglas on the Advancement of Society in Knowledge and 
Religion. 



360 



Thanksgiving. 



Read the almost plaintive words of Richard Baxter, 
— the- scarcely uttered hope cherished by him that the 
time might come when access could be had to the Orient, 
— and say if God's hand is not in this unlooked-for pro- 
pinquity of the nations. Along the Bosphorus, this new 
agent is breaking down the rigidity and breaking up the 
apathy of the Turk. Doubling the Cape of Good Hope, 
it has startled the sleep of the Bengalese and Chinaman. 
By its unconscious working in the Mediterranean, the 
Black Sea, and the Eastern Oceans, it has done more to 
diffuse intelligence, liberty, and life than any other provi- 
dential power whatever. It is a power which does not 
belong exclusively to commerce. Commerce ! Why, it 
is itself God's agent. The great sea was not intended to 
be a mere manufactory of whale oil, or a road for the 
transportation of cotton and tobacco. It is a highway of 
emerald and sapphire for the footsteps of Christianity. 
Henceforth, nothing is done in a corner. Nothing is t03 
remote to escape attention. The steamers which crowd 
their way through stormy seas, the roads of iron which 
bind whole continents together, the clicking wires which 
run their electric net-work through the air and beneath 
the ocean, are the great nerves of human sympathy, and 
are destined to the high office of uniting the whole race 
of man in a loving brotherhood. 

Nothing which is familiar to us strikes us as wondei 
ful. Surprise wears away in time from the greatest dis- 
coveries and inventions ; and we send thought through 
the air, and ride in carriages without horses, and in ships 
against the wind, just as carelessly and composedly as 
though such things had always been. Fletcher, the old 



The Past and the Present. 361 

dramatist, was counted as half crazy when he put into the 
mouth of Arbaces this ranting promise : 

" He shall have chariots easier than air, 
Which I will have invented : and thyself, 
That art the messenger, shall ride before him 
On a horse cut out of an entire diamond, 
That shall be made to go with golden wheels, 
I know not how yet." 

The wonder of the promise has long ago been real- 
ized ; and if the poetry of the dream should yet come to 
pass, and locomotives cut from solid diamonds, and car- 
wheels wrought from gold, should become common, we 
should ride after them with as little surprise as now we 
walk beneath the azure and the gold of God's glorious 
firmament. Who can forget the feeling of awe which 
came over him, when for the first time he received a tele- 
graphic dispatch from a distant city, transmitted from 
New York to New Orleans actually in advance of time 
itself ! This approaches spiritual power more nearly than 
any thing we have seen and handled. 

The authors of the Spectator, the Tatler, the Ram- 
bler, had no conception of the modern newspaper. This 
is one of the most wonderful and powerful agents of our 
times. It is dumb, yet it tells us of all which is done 
upon the earth. It bears in its own name the initials of 
the four points of the compass, N. E. W. S. — news. It is 
the great dial-plate on the clock of time. Go to the 
archives of an Historical Society, and consult an old 
newspaper ; let it be a file of the Boston News Letter, 
commenced in April, 1704, the first ever published on 
this Western continent. Reagl of African slaves in the 



3 62 



town of Boston, — perhaps a fresh cargo of stout-limbed 
Guineamen have arrived in a Newport ship : turn rapidly 
over the leaves of the volume ; your eye catches a suc- 
cession of great names and events, — Benjamin Franklin 
resisting the censorship of the press, and making the 
lightning of the skies a pastime for himself and his son, — 
tribute money, unjust taxation, mutterings and rebellion, 
Lexington, Bunker Hill, Revolution, Independence, Con- 
federacies and Constitutions, Fulton's humbug, commerce, 
arts, peace, prosperity, enterprise, expansion. May we 
not rightly call the smutty chronicle the index finger of 
Providence pointing to the hours on the chronometer of 
history ? An artist expends great time and labor in 
painting a panorama, and crowds find delight in gazing 
upon the canvas ; yet is it of a limited space, — a ruin, a 
river, a city, — Thebes or Jerusalem, the Nile, the Hud- 
son, or the Mississippi. But a newspaper is a daguerreo- 
tyye of the whole world, — its warrings, parturitions and 
diplomacies, its buyings and sellings, its governments and 
revolutions. The huge telescope of Sir John Herschel 
is so swung that it reflects all the distant wonders of the 
sky, which sweep across its lenses, upon a small horizontal 
table under the eye of the observer ; and analogous to 
this, a newspaper brings all the occurrences of remote 
continents under your astonished and delighted eye. 

Up by the North Pole, among seals, whales, and 
icebergs, we can just discern a scientific party endeavor- 
ing to force from Eternal Winter its ancient secret, and to 
ascertain if there be not a new way of getting round this 
small globe we inhabit In Africa are as many more, 
quite as vigorous and persevering in seeking to discover 



The Past and the Present. 363 



whereabouts certain rivers take their rise. Away on the 
Tigris are others digging up old Nineveh, perhaps the 
bones of Tiglath Pileser himself ; while that spot on the 
shores of the Pacific, resembling the life and activity of 
an ant-heap, is a vast company of what Bunyan would call 
muck-rakes, scrambling for gold. Yonder is Professor 
Teufelsdrockh demonstrating to a gaping auditory, that 
"society is founded on clothes," that man is God, that 
it is better to walk on your head than feet, or any other 
conceit that bewildered logic may happen to play with. 
Are you fond of seeing harlequins, the daily journal will 
please your fancy. Do you like spring-vaulting and 
tumbling, politicians will surprise you with feats of agility. 
If you prefer ledgerdemain, the wire-pullers will show you 
enough of sleight of hand ; and if tragedy is to your turn, 
the incendiarisms, the murders, the woes and the wars of 
this sad world call for no crocodile tears. And if you have 
learned to look at all things with the calm eye and sober 
judgment of a Christian, the thing which most interests 
and delights you is the conviction that God presides over 
this great stage of life, and that events transpire under 
his direction. Though the actors are not automata, yet 
their several parts are all worked into one great design : 
scenes the most startling, disappointments the most 
depressing, follies the most extravagant, are all overruled 
by an All-wise Master, and are hastening on a catastrophe 
which will be so joyous and wonderful as to fill heaven 
and earth with grateful applause. 

The newspaper is . the peculiarity of an age of inter- 
communication, an agent of human sympathy. What else 
lies at the bottom of this conception but a just idea of 



3 6 4 



Thanksgiving. 



man's fraternal relations ? It is the cheap correspondence 
carried on between all members of the human family. 
What a man puts into a newspaper on the other side of 
the globe, is on the supposition that it will interest the rest 
of the family on this continent. As we learn more of our 
fellow-men, we feel a kindlier interest in them. We re- 
joice in their prosperity, sympathize in their calamities, 
and cheer on their struggles for the right and the good. 
There are now too many newspapers abroad to allow a 
man to live like a snail. They enlarge the world to our 
knowledge and our love. Why is any thing made public 
but on the belief that it will be of interest to many others ? 
Why is it announced in your paper that Isaac and Rebecca 
were married on a certain day last week, but on the sup- 
position that it will give you pleasure to know it ? And 
when, lower down on the sheet, under that startling word 
Deaths, your eye runs along, always with apprehension 
lest it fall on some well-known name, and reads that the 
aged father, the young child, the beloved wife, the rich, 
the poor, the admired, the honored, and the beautiful are 
gone, is it not taken for granted that even strangers will 
heave a sigh for the afflicted, and the world respond 
in sympathy to the incursions of a common foe ? Read 
in this light, the commonest advertisements which crowd 
our papers have a kindly odor about them. Say not, with 
a cynic sneer, as though you were doubtful whether there 
was any thing honest in the world, when a store-keeper 
advertises his wares, that it is all sheer selfishness ; for if 
it is pleasant to one to announce a fresh supply of tallow 
or wool, hardware or muslins, is it not just as pleasant to 
some other one who wishes to know it ? When a brace 



The Past and the Present. 365 

of young partners in trade insert their virgin advertisement, 
informing the world how happy they shall be to wait on 
customers, can you read it without entering into their 
fresh hopes and giving them your blessing in their new 
career ? Business advertisements ! Waste paper ! You 
know not what you say. Those ships which are to sail 
to every harbor in the world, those fabrics which have ar- 
rived from every commercial mart on earth, this iron from 
Russia, tea from China, wool from Smyrna, fruit from 
Malaga, coffee from Cuba, cotton from Georgia, sugar 
from Louisiana, — do they not preach to us at the corners 
of the streets, at the entering in of the gates, on our 
docks, and in our custom-houses and exchanges, sermons 
on the mutual dependence of mankind ? 

Charles Lamb has a very humorous conception, in a 
letter to an acquaintance at New South Wales, on the 
difficulty of corresponding in a free and friendly manner 
with one at so great a distance, comparing it to the effort 
of talking through a tube to the man in the moon. It 
was a playful conceit ; for, in sober judgment, the facilities 
for communication between distant parts of the earth 
have destroyed the old confusion of ideas about longitudes, 
latitudes, and differences of time ; the tubes are connected 
between the different apartments of our Father's house, 
as they are in our modern architecture, so that the fresh- 
ness of sympathy and ardor of love are not lost in the 
great and dividing sea. How much time elapsed before 
the exploit of Leonidas at Thermopylae was known west 
of the Tiber we cannot divine. Scarcely was the first 
blow struck by Garibaldi, before every eye was turned, 
every ear alert, every heart alive ; for the daily visitant at 



Thanksgiving. 



our dwellings made all personal spectators and participa- 
tors in the scene. The school-boy in Vermont and Ohio, 
in his weekly declamation, has rehearsed with emotion 
the noble sentiment of Blum on the morning of his exe- 
cution : 

" Whether it be the scaffold high, 
Or in the battle's van ; 
The proper place for man to die 
Is where he dies for man." 

Patriots struggle not alone. What occurs on the 
Arno or the Tiber rouses the sympathies of all mankind. 
Nor do these expend themselves in useless emotion. 
They create a sentiment, and establish a law to which all 
actions must be referred and by which they must be 
judged. The more of ubiquity is given to what men do, 
the more certain is it that they will be held accountable 
for what they do. " They that be drunken are drunken 
in the night." The frantic cruelties of the world's Cali- 
gulas and Borgias were perpetrated in darkness ; but as 
light spreads, and the conviction gains ground that what 
is done to-day in a closet will, ere the sun rises, be pro- 
claimed upon the house-tops, that conviction must work 
for the suppression of cruelty, for the shame of tyranny, 
and the triumph of truth and goodness. 

That freedom of opinion, of which the newspaper is 
the symbol, is looked upon by many with apprehension. 
There is no subject concerning which men are so slow of 
heart to believe as liberty. At first even good men are 
afraid of it. They handle it as they would an animal in 
a cage. They open the door by little and little. They 



The Past and the Present. 367 

are afraid to let the bolt fly clear back, and let go of the 
chain and the collar for ever. Had the band of Pilgrims 
who founded the Massachusetts colonies, who, for the 
sake of freedom of conscience, sacrificed homes, churches, 
and universities, foreseen the time when papers advocating 
infidelity, agrarianism, Fourierism, prelacy, the Papacy, 
the wildest and the most arrogant follies of Church and 
State, would everywhere be tolerated, they would have 
started back aghast ; and we know not but such an un- 
expected glimpse of the concealed purposes of Providence 
would have led them to hail the Mayflower as she weighed 
her anchor, to take them back for shelter under the sur- 
plice of Archbishop Laud. In the year 1723 the news- 
paper called " The New-Engla?id Courant" established 
by James Franklin, as an organ of independent opinion, 
was censured, interdicted and stopped, " except it first be 
supervised." "I can well remember," writes Increase 
Mather, then more than fourscore years of age, " when 
the civil government would have taken an effectual course 
to suppress such a cursed libel." You cannot stop the 
sun at the horizon. If men are dazzled by liberty, the 
proper cure is liberty. There can be no true freedom for 
what is good, except there be freedom for what is bad. 
The best mode of refuting sophistry and mischievous 
opinions is to let them come forth to the light. We have 
no wish that enemies should sap our foundations in secret, 
and spring a mine on us stealthily. Let them think aloud. 
It is better to give vent to mephitic gases into the air 
than confine the explosive elements in subterranean gal- 
leries. If a man really intends to overturn and re-organize 
society, advocating community of property, the dissolution 



368 Thanksgiving, 

of the family, reducing the human race to a herd of 
animals in broadcloth, let him avow his purpose in a 
public newspaper, and if the result be not the complete 
frustration of his scheme, the demonstrated futility of his 
project, it swill only be as there is no power in truth, and 
no right in equity. Truth never has suffered in a fair and 
open discussion. Weapons which seem to pierce her 
ethereal form through and through, leave her spiritual 
body unharmed. There is many a man with a conceit in 
his brain, for whom the best prescription would be that 
he should publish it. For the mischief done to the 
unwary we greatly deplore that so many vipers should be 
brought out from the kindling fires of freedom ; but, 
because of this, we cannot consent that the fires should 
be put out and we be left to freeze on desert islands. 
When the warm sun of summer is up, it brings all 
unclean and creeping things to life. The grass is 
full of all manner of vermin ; so is the bark of great 
trees. The adder crawls out of his hole to bask in the 
glowing heat, but whole harvests of grain overtop and 
conceal the mischief; the forests are growing taller and 
taller, and fruits are ripening on every tree. Just so is it 
beneath the genial warmth of freedom. If incidental evils 
are developed, if the loathsome agencies of infidelity are 
warmed into life, do not forget that beneath the same 
vital heat the rich verdure of a continent is springing up 
higher and higher, and the trees of righteousness, the 
planting of the Lord, are striking their roots the deeper 
and spreading out their fruitful boughs to the ends of the 
earth. 

Now we see the bearing of providential agencies in 



The Past and the Present. 369 

increased facilities for international intercourse on the 
prospects of the world. America is no longer the un- 
known and remote land it was when discovered by Co- 
lumbus. It is near to all the world and all the world is 
accessible to it. Regarded as the home of hope and 
freedom, furnishing ample room in which stifled millions 
may breathe and live, immigration has set in like the 
tides of the sea. The immigrant, finding his most san- 
guine hopes surpassed, has reported to those behind what 
he has seen and accomplished. Millions on the Rhine 
have heard of it. France and Switzerland, Norway, 
Belgium, Holland, Ireland, Wales, England and Scotland, 
Italy and Hungary, Poland and Sweden, have all experi- 
enced that electric sympathy which has reacted from the 
log-cabins which their emigrant population have reared 
in the new settlements of the New World. These last 
are not beyond talking distance with their old homes. 
St. Louis is within ear-shot of Hamburg. The wires 
touch between New York and Berlin. Indeed, we cannot 
judge of events by their first appearance. Look at the Pu- 
ritans of England, when suffering under the Five-mile Act, 
and you might esteem them the objects of Divine dis- 
pleasure. But the world was not to come to an end until 
God had most gloriously vindicated his justice in the 
ultimate honor and prosperity of those who, for a time, 
were called to the endurance of suffering and hardship. 
These institutions which are now stretching away to the 
setting sun ; these blessings which brighten and enlarge 
around us, are but a part of those results which Provi- 
dence has connected with the fortitude and fidelity of the 
noble men who, ages ago, willingly suffered in testimony 
16* 



37° 



Thanksgiving. 



of truth. The extent of our territory, and the growth of 
our institutions, can surprise none more than ourselves. 

One cannot but be amused in reading a book on 
America, by an English, French, or German traveller, even 
though he aims at great accuracy ; for before he can reach 
home and pass his volume through the press, his statis- 
tics are all obsolete. A single jar changes the whole 
kaleidoscope. On the shores of the Pacific a nation has 
been born in a day ; a populous State, inhabited by the 
young, the enterprising, the bold and energetic, looks out 
from the " Golden Gate " upon the astonished East ; and 
this from a territory which a few years ago was not 
known by name to the Republic, itself the abode of semi- 
civilized vagrants. 

But the greatest of changes have been moral. The 
effect of the Revolutionary war was most disastrous on 
the morals of the country. Voltaire has said, " Put to- 
gether all the vices of ages, and they will not come up 
to the mischiefs and enormities of a single campaign." 
Added to these common effects of war, French infidelity 
had been imported, and the virus had spread, infecting 
many of the leading men of the country. The deistical 
writings of Ethan Allen and Thomas Paine had acquired 
an immense popularity, all the greater from the memory 
of Ticonderoga, with which the former, and the political 
treatise of " Common Sense," with which the latter was 
associated. The scale is now turned. The sentiment of 
the nation is decidedly in favor of Christianity. The 
secular press, to a great extent, recognizes and honors it. 
The old falsehood that infidelity is necessarily associated 
with freedom and progress, is here abjured. Christianity 



The Past and the Present. 371 

has her ablest advocates in all departments of intellectual 
and physical science ; her firmest believers among the 
intelligent friends of popular progress. Statesmen and 
merchants, men of thought and men of action, have grad- 
ually been working their way to the conviction that the 
Christian religion is the best aid and promoter of secular 
improvement, and whatever is done to give to its institu- 
tions a broader basis, is a sure pledge of all national 
prosperity. 

All the agencies for good which have been men- 
tioned are yet in their infancy. Their power will be 
reduplicated in time to come. Progress for the future, 
under these organized and providential instrumentalities, 
must be vastly accelerated. It is the certainty of yet 
greater advancement which gives to our times the brightest 
aspect. What recoils and reactions may be thrown into 
intermediate history, we cannot predict. That such things 
should occur in our career accords with the general course 
of Divine procedure. But episodes stop not the drama, 
nor eddies the current of the stream. The course of the 
world and the country is onward and onward still. 
Remote deserts unknown to us in the solitudes of the 
West will soon smile under the culture of happy freemen. 
Flocks of sheep and herds of cattle will supplant the elk 
and the buffalo. Natural obstacles to intercourse will be 
removed ; the Rocky Mountains will be tunnelled, and the 
two oceans will be joined together. The banks of our 
rivers and the shores of our lakes will shine with opulent 
cities ; commerce will whiten our waters ; agriculture 
cover a continent with wheat and corn, and places now 
unknown to civilized man will resound with all the hum 



372 Thanksgiving. 

and stir of busy life. The school-house and the church, 
those engines and hopes of freemen, will be reared fast as 
the forest drops before the march of enterprise. 

The day of universal jubilee will surely come. Every 
year bears the world nearer to its promised Sabbath. 
Generations pass from the earth, but time does not 
stop. Man and the world he inhabits are subject to 
change, but the Word of the Lord endureth for ever. 
The rocks may be worn away by the encroachments of 
the sea, the mountains levelled by the attrition of ages, 
the stars may lose their light and the sun his glory, but 
the promise of God standeth sure and changeless on its 
immovable foundations. " He shall come down like 

RAIN UPON THE MOWN GRASS : IN HlS DAYS SHALL THE 
RIGHTEOUS FLOURISH, AND ABUNDANCE OF PEACE SO 
LONG AS THE MOON ENDURETH. He SHALL HAVE DO- 
minion from sea to sea, and from the river unto 
the ends of the earth. hls name shall endure 
for ever; His name shall be continued so long 
as the sun : and all nations shall be blessed in 
Him. Blessed be the Lord God, the God of Israel, 
who only doeth wondrous things, and blessed be 
His glorious name for ever, and let the whole 
earth be filled with His Glory. Amen and 
Amen." 



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'"TIMOTHY TITCOMB'S NEW BOOK. Kathrina, her Life and 
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"DAULDIXG'S (J. K.) WORKS. The Bulls and the Jonathans 
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